Madam C. J. Walker

Erica L. Ball is a professor of History and Black Studies at Occidental College. Ball is the author of To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class (2012). She is co-editor, with Kellie Carter Jackson, of Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, and Memory (2017) and co-editor, with Tatiana Seijas and Terri L. Snyder, of As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipations in the Americas (2020).

• Preface1. Daughter2. Migrant3. Madam Walker4. Businesswoman5. Race Woman6. IconEpilogueA Note on SourcesIndexAbout the Author

This is an exhaustively detailed account of the life of Madam C.J. Walker, an early twentieth–century self-made entrepreneur who built an international conglomerate by selling beauty and hair-care products specifically designed for African American women. In the early 1900s, Walker celebrated natural beauty during a time when other companies were pushing skin lighteners and straightening lotions. Like her contemporaries Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden, Walker shrouded her early life in mystery, but author Ball combines the few known facts with political and social history to create a credible backstory. Once Walker adopts her professional moniker in her mid-thirties, Ball relies on a profusion of testimonials, company advertisements, media releases, and interviews that document her business acumen, storied philanthropy, and copious work for racial uplift. Ball parallels Walker's life with national events, demonstrating how Walker's efforts supported young women of color as they explored their expanding options. An epilogue explores the evolution of Walker's legacy. The daughter of formerly enslaved people, Walker described her life as a journey "from the wash tub . . . to the boardroom." This addition to the Library of African American Biography tells the story of this remarkable woman.