the salve who became first billionaire
Madam Walker, who was the first woman in America to become a billionaire on her own, was born in 1867 to freed slaves on a Louisiana cotton farm. She accomplished this by founding the Madam C.J. Walker Company. Her business was a cosmetics producer based in Indianapolis, Indiana, with a focus on haircare and beauty goods for African American women.
Only Walker's philanthropy and activism could be compared to her business prowess. In Indianapolis' Black community, she assisted in establishing a YMCA, and she gave money to the Tuskegee Institute. After relocating to New York, she became a member of the NAACP, generously contributed to the organization's anti-lynching fund, and hired the city's first Black architect to design Villa Lewaro, her mansion on the Hudson where luminaries like Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois gathered to discuss issues affecting the African American community.
In addition to being a spectacularly successful African American business owner by the time of her death in 1919, she was also regarded as one of America's most successful businesspeople ever.
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