Customer Reviews

Madam C. J. Walker (Journey to Freedom: The African American Library)

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I have been picking up volumes in the Journey to Freedom series of the African American Library as I have come across them and this particular look at Madame C. J. Walker was the first where I did not recognize the name of the biographical subject. Born Sarah Breedlove a couple of years after the Civil War, she was a mother and a widow by the time she was 20 years old. In 1904 she had a dream in which a man told her the names of secret ingredients for hair-care products. As Lori Hobkirk explains in this informative juvenile biography, black women often lost their hair when they tried to wear it long. The morning after her dream, Sarah prepared her new tonic and was soon selling to to African American women all across the United States.

Starting with door-to-door sales of her cosmetics, and having adopted the name Madame C.J. Walker after her second marriage, she amassed a fortune and in 1910 even built her own factory in Indianapolis to manufacture her line of cosmetics. As she told the National Negro Business League Convention in 1912, she was a woman who went from working in the cotton fields to working in the cook kitchen, and who them promoted herself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations, eventually building her own factory on her own ground. Madame C. J. Walker represents the standard American rags-to-riches success story, but given that she was an African American woman who adopted a new name at a time when the richest people in the country were white males from old families is what makes her story so inspirational. In 1918 she became the first millionaire African American woman, but long before that point young readers will be impressed by her success.

Walker and her daughter opened up the first of several schools where women were trained in the "Walker Method" of sales, but she also pioneered the idea of having her customers help her sell the products to other people. In addition to being an entrepreneur Walker was a philanthropist and activist. This Journey to Freedom volume is illustrated with period photographs from Walker's life, including some of the original ads for her hair-care products. The back of the volume has a Timeline for Walker's life, Glossary, Index, and books and web sites that provide Further Information.

The goal of the Journey to Freedom series is to educate and inform children about the achievements and contributions of America's noted African American leaders, inventors, educators, scientists, entrepreneurs, entertainers, and sports figures. These volumes tell not only the story of the lives of such people from Benjamin Banneker and Sojourner Truth to Rosa Parks and Colin Powell, but also focus on the events that shaped their lives. Madam C. J. Walker was the one name on the list that I did not recognize, but after reading about her remarkable life it is one that I am not going to forget.