Early Life
Walker was born Sarah Breedlove, on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana to Owen and Minerva Breedlove. She was one of six children; she had a sister Louvenia and four brothers: Alexander, James, Solomon, and Owen, Jr. Her parents and elder siblings were slaves on Madison Parish plantation owned by Robert W. Burney . She was the first child in her family born into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Her mother died, possibly from cholera, in 1872. Her father remarried and died shortly afterward.
Madam C. J. Walker moved in with her older sister and brother-in-law, Willie Powell. At the age of 14, she married Moses McWilliams to escape Powell's abuse and three years later her daughter, Lelia McWilliams (A'Lelia Walker) was born. When Sarah was 20, her husband died, Lelia was just 2 years old. Shortly afterward she moved to St. Louis where three of her brothers lived; her brothers were all barbers at a local barbershop. In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman,
Read more about this topic: Madam C. J. Walker
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)