As a manufacturer of hair care products for African American women, Madame C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove (1867-1919), became one of the first American women millionaires.

Madame C.J. Walker, named Sarah Breedlove at birth, was born December 23, 1867, in Delta, Louisiana, to Owen and Minerva Breedlove, both of whom were emancipated slaves. The Breedloves worked as sharecroppers on a cotton plantation. At the age of six Sarah was orphaned, and in 1878, after the cotton crop failed and a yellow fever epidemic struck, the young girl moved to Vicksburg to live with her sister Louvinia and to work as a domestic. She worked hard from the time that she was very young, suffered great poverty, and had little opportunity to get an education. In order to escape the oppressive environment created by Louvinia's husband, Sarah married Moses McWilliams when she was only fourteen years old. At eighteen she...