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Library | Collection | Collection | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Kerman Branch Library (Fresno Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Biography Area | WALKER C Bal | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"[An] exhaustively detailed account of the life of Madam C.J. Walker." Booklist , Starred Review
Madam C. J. Walker--reputed to be America's first self-made woman millionaire--has long been celebrated for her rags-to-riches story. Born to former slaves in the Louisiana Delta in the aftermath of the Civil War, married at fourteen, and widowed at twenty, Walker spent the first decades of her life as a laundress, laboring in conditions that paralleled the lives of countless poor and working-class African American women. By the time of her death in 1919, however, Walker had refashioned herself into one of the most famous African American figures in the nation: the owner and president of a hair-care empire and a philanthropist wealthy enough to own a country estate near the Rockefellers in the prestigious New York town of Irvington-on-Hudson. In this biography, Erica Ball places this remarkable and largely forgotten life story in the context of Walker's times. Ball analyzes Walker's remarkable acts of self-fashioning, and explores the ways that Walker (and the Walker brand) enabled a new generation of African Americans to bridge the gap between a nineteenth-century agrarian past and a twentieth-century future as urban-dwelling consumers.
Author Notes
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).
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ball (To Live an Antislavery Life), a professor of history and Black studies at Occidental College, delivers a concise and revealing biography of hair- and skin-care entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker (1867--1919). Born Sarah Breedlove to former slaves in a one-room cabin on a Louisiana plantation, Walker moved in 1887 or 1888 to St. Louis, where her brothers were barbers. After working as a sales agent for Mrs. Annie Pope's Wonderful Hair Grower, she moved to Denver in 1905 and developed her own line of hair-care products. Walker traveled across the country to promote her business and franchise beauty schools and salons, and by 1911 had 950 agents selling her products nationwide. She also "engag in an array of community-building, philanthropic, and civil rights endeavors," including the NAACP's antilynching crusade. By the time of her death, she was worth $8.7 million in today's money, with a mansion in Westchester County, N.Y., where her neighbors included John D. Rockefeller. Ball persuasively links Walker's self-reinvention as a sophisticated entrepreneur to the transformation of formerly agrarian Black Southerners into a style-conscious and politically active urban Black working class. This brisk and informative account serves as a worthy introduction to a trailblazing businesswoman and social justice advocate. (Jan.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated where the author teaches.
Booklist Review
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 (To Live an Antislavery Life, 2012) 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.Women in Focus: The 19th in 2020
Choice Review
A pleasure to read, this well-crafted biography focuses on the creation of a role model and the meaning of that creation. In this compelling historical account, with its effortlessly flowing narrative, Ball (Occidental College) reveals the process by which Sarah Breedlove, the daughter of formerly enslaved parents, rose to become a household name while amassing a fortune, commanding great respect through her philanthropic endeavors. The facts of Walker's early life are vague because of a lack of records and because she never revealed many details. She crafted and controlled her own narrative, a remarkable feat for a Black woman in early-20th-century America. Never ashamed of her humble beginnings, her mantra was "from the washtub to the boardroom" (p. 76). Walker's success was due to her branding, claiming divine revelation as her inspiration and marketing herself as a hair grower, placing her in the lineage of healers. Demonstrating her products and methods, she drew women together in communal spaces imbued with a focus on self-care, a rarity for African American women in post-Reconstruction America. With each chapter expertly situated in African American history, this text is suitable for women's, African American, and/or business history. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. --Hilary Aquino, Albright College