From Self-Made Millionaire To Billionaire Black Businesswoman
Madam C.J. Walker is credited with being the first Black female self-made millionaire, having amassed her fortune from her line of homemade haircare products for Black women. While media mogul Oprah Winfrey comes first to mind it was Sheila Johnson, cofounder of BET and presently CEO of Salamander Hotels and Resorts, who was America’s first Black female billionaire. The first Black woman to own a company that generated $1 billion in revenue was Janice Bryant Howroyd, founder and CEO of the ActOne Group, a global human resources management firm.
Black women are the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs in the U.S. Fueled by the pandemic and the exodus of Black women from corporate America, startups by Black women outpace all other groups. But reports show these founders face disproportionate financial headwinds. Due to a lack of access to capital, Black women are more likely than other demographic groups to self-fund their businesses. Black female founders receive less than 0.40% of VC funding.
Journalist A’Lelia Bundles is Madam Walker’s great-great-granddaughter. Her mother, A’Lelia Mae Perry Bundles, was vice president of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. As a young girl, Bundles “knew who Madam Walker was,” because she would visit the factory and see the ladies mixing the product by hand. But it was as a student at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in 1975 that “I was encouraged by my advisor, Professor Phyllis Garland, the only Black woman on the faculty, to write my master’s paper about Madam Walker,” she says.
Bundles discovered her great-greatgrandmother was an icon, not just because she manufactured a haircare product but because she built a national franchise business based on her invention. “She became so much more than a footnote in history,” she says. The women she employed were not just Walker beauticians, but “these women became economically independent as a result of working for her as sales agents and beauty culturists.”
Her thesis set her on a journey that led to four books, a Madam Walker Barbie doll, a Netflix series titled Self-Made and various national historic landmarks in the works. A new MADAM by Madam C.J. Walker haircare line created by Sundial Brands (a Unilever subsidiary) is sold in Walmart.
Bundles acknowledges her greatgreat-grandmother also was a social justice activist. “Not only did she become a millionaire who built a mansion, but she used her wealth and influence to make a difference in her community as a philanthropist, a patron of the arts and a supporter of the NAACP’s anti-lynching movement.”
At her 1917 national sales convention, Madam Walker told her agents in her keynote, “I want you to understand that your first duty is to humanity. I want others to look at us and realize that we care not just about ourselves, but about others.”
Black women are the fastest-growing segment of entrepreneurs in the U.S. Fueled by the pandemic and the exodus of Black women from corporate America, startups by Black women outpace all other groups.