"I got my start by giving myself a start."

Madam CJ Walker

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a lack of indoor plumbing made personal hygiene, especially hair care, difficult. As a result of infrequent care, many women of the time experienced hair loss. Madame "Sarah" CJ Walker began to suffer from such a scalp ailment and, embarrassed by her appearance, experimented with a variety of home-made remedies and products made by another black woman entrepreneur, Annie Malone. In 1905, Sarah became a sales agent for Malone and established her own business and began selling her own product called Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula. To promote her products, she embarked on an exhausting sales drive throughout the South and Southeast selling her products door to door, giving demonstrations, and working on sales and marketing strategies. In 1908, she opened a college in Pittsburgh to train her "hair culturists." Eventually, her products formed the basis of a thriving national corporation employing at one point over 3,000 people. Her Walker System, which included a broad offering of cosmetics, licensed Walker Agents, and Walker Schools offered meaningful employment and personal growth to thousands of Black women. Madame Walker's aggressive marketing strategy combined with relentless ambition led her to be labeled as the first known African-American woman to become a self-made millionaire.

The MEAPA Way suggests that individuals, business, schools, communities and other organizations can learn a variety of lessons from her life story by watching two short videos: one from the National Archives and one from a school and answering the following questions:

• How does her life symbolize the ability to engage in self-improvement?
• What role do you think self-confidence and self-discipline have in her life?
• What vision did Walker have for her life?
• How did she help so many African-American women?
• How did her life demonstrate a commitment to resourcefulness?
• What other PATH traits and habits do you think she probably exhibited?  Explain.