Madam C. J. Walker: The Making of an American Icon

by Erica L. Ball

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.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Business

166 pages, Hardcover

Published January 29, 2021

Reviews

[Meghan Bohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excited to read about this fantastic woman, although I found the book itself to be a little repetitive and dense in some places. Still very glad it was written!
Up from 2.5 stars.
Thank you very much to Rowan & Littlefield and NetGalley for an ARC!

[Harlow]

This was the CCPLM HERstory book selection for March.

Good thing I saw Stanley Nelson’s “Two Dollars and a Dream” on PBS, ages ago, so I was familiar with Walker.

DNF . . . Maybe three book groups in two days is overbooking?

I better get a head start on the April book!