Self Made Millionaire

Let me tell you about the first time I ever heard of a self-made millionaire!

I was in the third grade and I selected Madame C.J Walker as my person of interest for a book report. I heard the name and was immediately intrigued. As the process began, I read more about this woman who was America’s first Black self made millionaire. Let me remind you that all this was pre-Google, Wikipedia, and I-phone days. I actually went to the library and checked out books with my library card. What a time it was to be alive!

Photo by unknown

As the story of Madame C.J. Walker began to unfold, I didn’t realize how her story, passion, and life journey would influence mine and many others in the future. This woman can never be removed from history and she used her creativity to come up with ways for black women to style and take care of their hair and influence future inventions beyond her time.

Photo by unknown

A daughter of former slaves Madame CJ Walker, came from humble beginnings. By age seven she was left an orphan after the passing of both her mother and father.

In 1888 Walker and her daugther moved to Saint Louis, Missouri where she was able to work as a laundress barley earning more than a dollar a day. Due to harsh chemicals in soaps like lye, she like many women during this time suffered from severe dandruff, hair loss, and balding. For those of us who do not know, lye was used in soaps and during this time it was strong enough to wash clothes but had harmful effects on the skin. Lye can cause blindness, it can burn skin, and can cause death if ingested. During the time when she concieved an idea to create her famous "Wonderful Hair Grower" she was actually losing her hair. Due to the heartbreaking circumstance that she faced she choose to let this fuel her and not break her. She began mixing cleaners and solutions and invented products to help black women with hair growth.

Moral of the story is your current situation or circumstances could be fuel for you to do something life changing, history can be made everyday. It starts with you!  

Photo by unknown