African American History Month | Entrepreneurs | Life

"Don't sit down and wait for opportunities to come . . . get up and make them!" Madam C.J. Walker

Fifteenth Annual Convention of the National Negro Business League | august 1914

Today I wanted to talk about African Americans and business. I wanted to highlight someone who shines a light on what can be done when you don't let fear stop you. She was born with the name Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Louisiana.  The first child in her family to be born into Freedom out of six. At around seven she was orphaned despite this she persivered and got possibly her first job as a domestic. In 1882, she married her first husband ,Moses McWilliams, who later died in 1887 two years afther the birth of their daughter Lelia McWilliams. Sarah was married again in 1894 but left around 1903 and moved to Dever, Colorado in 1905. She began losing her hair at about this time. Because of this she begain to experiment with different techniques and pomades for healing her hair condition. When she moved to Saint Louis, Mossouri where her brothers lived she learned more. Around 1904 she became a commissioned sales agent for Annie Turnbo Malone an African American who owned a hair company called  Poro Company. In 1906 is when she married Charles Joseph Walker. With help from the buisness aspect Sarah developed her own business and became known as Madam C.J. Walker. By the time of her death in May of 1919 she was worth  600,000, 8 million present day. Making her the wealthiest African American woman in America at that time

I am so in love with Sarah's story she came from the bottom as a share croppers child in the south. To an orphan, widow, single mother and divorcie. Anyone that has been through any of these can tell you how hard it was for them. But can you imagine all of these and also being an uneducted black woman from the south? But she didn't let any of those things stop her she listened to that voice inside that said "someone may benefit from this." She may have been afraid to do it. But she didn't let it stop her. She educated herself and surrounded her self with people that helped her achieve her dream. Not only did she help hundreads of African American women to become independent earners but she gave back to the community. She rewarded her employees to do the same. I hope that those of you reading this post can take away from this that it dosen't matter where you come from. But what matters is where  you are going and how you treat others when you get there.

Find out more about Madam C.J. Walker  (Sarah Breedlove) at the following websites:
Madam_C._J._Walker
History
madam-c-j-walker

Love,

SweetLifeMinimalist
Follow me here...Bloglovin   and...  Twitter for more.

Last Post...HAIR | AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN | MINIMALISM





Disclaimer
References : Madam_C._J._Walker on Wikapedia
Madamcjwalker.com  website
Quote found at quotabelle.
photo