Overview

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.

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9781442260382

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. . . a concise and revealing biography of hair- and skin-care entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) . . . Ball persuasively links Walker's self-reinvention as a sophisticated entrepreneur to the transformation of formerly agrarian Black Southerners into a style-conscious and politically active urban Black working class. This brisk and informative account serves as a worthy introduction to a trailblazing businesswoman and social justice advocate.--Publishers Weekly Erica Ball has applied the keen eye of a historian through her meticulous research and the ability to extract what is hidden between the lines in archival records about Madam C.J. Walker's amazing life. Readers will understand how Sarah Breedlove, later Walker, wielded transformation as a tool personally, professionally, and politically. Walker's physical appearance, institution building, and strategic philanthropy allowed her to transform the lives of ordinary black folk domestically and abroad. In her short life, Madam C.J. Walker served as a flesh and blood exemplar of what was possible by centering Black women and ultimately, a Black nation.--Deirdre Cooper Owens, Ph.D., Professor in the History of Medicine; Director, Humanities in Medicine, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Erica Ball has written the most nuanced interpretation of Madam C. J. Walker--a woman who understood the power of reinvention for public consumption and capitalist success.--Ula Y. Taylor, Ph.D., Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Erica Ball has applied the keen eye of a historian through her meticulous research and the ability to extract what is hidden between the lines in archival records about Madam C.J. Walker's amazing life. Readers will understand how Sarah Breedlove, later Walker, wielded transformation as a tool personally, professionally, and politically. Walker's physical appearance, institution building, and strategic philanthropy allowed her to transform the lives of ordinary black folk domestically and abroad. In her short life, Madam C.J. Walker served as a flesh and blood exemplar of what was possible by centering Black women and ultimately, a Black nation.--Deirdre Cooper Owens, Ph.D., Professor in the History of Medicine; Director, Humanities in Medicine, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Erica Ball has written the most nuanced interpretation of Madam C. J. Walker--a woman who understood the power of reinvention for public consumption and capitalist success.--Ula Y. Taylor, Ph.D., Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Author Information

Erica J. Ball, associate professor of American Studies at California State Fullerton, is the author of To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class (2012) and coeditor with Kellie Carter Jackson. Reconsidering Roots: Observations on the Fortieth Anniversary of a TV Mini-Series that Changed the Way We Understood American Slavery (forthcoming).

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