Madame Resolute
...ege in Tennessee (Fortune). After many years of hard work and low wages, Sarah was becoming worn out. She had problems for years with her hair falling out and creating bald spots. She tried various mixtures of household items such as sulfer and vegetable oil to help restore and fortify her hair. Things all of a sudden began looking up for Sarah when she discovered a formula of hair balm that actually helped strengthen and grow her course ethnic hair. Acting quickly on this discovery she brilliantly devised a plan to sell the product. She began within her local church community, St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church, and then sold door-to-door in local black communities. Since colored women were viewed as inferior, there was not room or option to sell her product in a general market because as an African American she knew that she would not have been given government backing or formal business dealings due to racism and prejudice. Her product worked and colored women wanted it so she used the means afforded to her, which at that time were few and far between. The Library of Congress records the products she manufactured as being: Vegetable Shampoo, Wonderful Hair Grower and Glossine (Myers). Soon she had enough customers and income to quit working as a laundress and devote all her energy to her growing business. In 1906, she married Charles Joseph Walker, a Denver newspaperman. His journalistic background proved helpful in implementing advertising and promotional schemes for her products in various black publications, as well as through mail-order procedures (Fortune). Once Sarah established this “market,” she noted the need to expand her product. In 1906 she moved to Denver and married a newspaperman named Charles Joseph Walker. With her business prospering, she changed her name to Madame C.J. Walker; the Madame was customary of women in business, and C.J. after her husband. Her husband provided advertising and promotional schemes for her new company; Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing. Madame Walker left her now grown daughter to take care of operations in Denver that had began to expand into mail-ordering while she traveled throughout the South and East “selling her product and teaching her hair care methods” (Gale). When she reached Indianapolis in 1911, she built her first factory (Fortune). Walker's strategy to strengthen her business on the East and West coasts kept her on the road. She was convinced that making personal contact was the way to accelerate sales, Walker swept across the East Coast, dropping in at fraternal and religious meetings, where she was sure to encounter customers and investors. Eventually her marketing efforts would take her to the Caribbean and to Central America (Bundles). In 1913 she was advised by her lawyer to be mindful that exceeding $3,000 for annual income would be subject to a federal tax on personal earnings when the 16th Amendment was ratified (Fortune). Madame Walker was more interested in how she could establish her status as an influence for other colored people to achieve higher goals. All the while her business was booming, she never forgot her roots and devoted her work, and work ethics, to the people of her race, women in particular. She hired women with little education, as well as some with more education than herself, to help them become independent and advocates against racial injustices. The women she brought on board to sell her products were more than just employees, they were students of Madame Walkers quest for helping her race. The profits she made went back into her business for advertising, traveling to promote her products, and once she had a large enough capital she began donating to black charities and causes that she believed would help her race progress. She was determined to touch every major black social gathering possible. She would begin by contacting the Baptist or African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, and introduce herself to the local black fraternal organizations. Then she would arrange demonstrations; hold classes to train agents; take orders and move on (Fortune). By 1917 the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company was the largest black-owned business in the country, with annual revenues of approximately $500,000. Much of its success was built around the sales force--thousands of black women known as Walker agents. Dressed in white blouses and long black skirts, they became familiar sights in black communities (Gale). She donated significantly to anti lynching causes that the NAACP argued against the government such as the Anti Lynching Campaign in 1919. The following is an excerpt found from a letter to Madame Walker recorded at the Center of Historical Women through Binghamton University; “Madame Walker, The announcement by Mrs. Talbert at Carnegie Hall on Monday night of your most generous gift, the largest the Association has ever received, produced a tremendous effect upon the whole audience and was received with great applause. Immediately another gift of $1,000 was made, which I feel sure we would not have received had not yours preceded it. Mr. Storey asked me to express to you his personal gratification that he work we are doing appealed to you so much as to compel you to contribute as you have done” (Congress. Doc2). This letter shows how far reaching Madame Walker was willing to go for the betterment of her brothers and sisters. The Anti-Lynching Bill of 1918 was introduced to Congress by Congressman Leonida Dyer of Missouri. The Bill contests the ghastly violence that lynching consisted of. The beginning of the B...