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prologue
By
Ted ScheinmanLeft, Walker in 1912; bottom left, Octavia Spencer
as the inspiring businesswoman in the Netfl ix series
“Self Made,” which debuts this month ; below,
a tin of Walker’s signature product.M
GROWTH INDUSTRY
A turn-of-the-century hair-
care magnate who shared
her wealth gets the spotlightADAM C.J. WALKER, born Sarah Breedlove
in Louisiana in 1867, was the most success-
ful black wellness mogul of her day. Now a
new Netfl ix series will show how this enter-
prising daughter of freed slaves empowered
generations of black women to prosper.
Breedlove was in her 30s when she began treating
her bald spots with beeswax, copper sulfate and sul-
fur. She found it so eff ective she sold it to other black
women door-to-door in Denver. In 1908, having mar-
ried a Colorado journalist named Charles J. Walker,
she launched a beauty school in Pittsburgh with the
profi ts from “Mrs. Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.”
Soon she was training a legion of women who earned
a living selling her products.
Indeed, her most signifi cant legacy might be “the
opportunities she provided for other black women to
become economically autonomous through selling
her products,” says Crystal Marie Moten, a curator at
the National Museum of American History.
Walker died in 1919, and even after making sub-
stantial donations to organizations in the black com-
munity, her fortune was estimated at $600,000 to
$700,000—or $8.9 million to $10.7 million today.ENTERPRISE