Query of the Day [Women’s History Month]: How did Madam C.J. Walker grow to be one of many first self-made feminine millionaires?

She turned $1.50 right into a million-dollar empire. Are you able to guess how?

Reply: 

By growing and promoting hair care merchandise for Black girls

Questions:

• Madam C.J. Walker constructed her model via phrase of mouth and door-to-door gross sales. How do you suppose she would market her merchandise in the present day?
• Do you suppose it is simpler or more durable to grow to be a self-made millionaire in the present day than in her time?
• Walker’s magnificence merchandise stuffed a niche out there that nobody else had addressed. What’s a services or products in the present day that also must be created?

Listed below are the ready-to-go slides for this Query of the Day that you should utilize in your classroom.

Behind the numbers (Nationwide Girls’s Historical past Museum): 

Struggling financially, dealing with hair loss, and feeling the pressure of years of bodily labor, Walker’s life took a dramatic flip in 1904. That yr, she not solely started utilizing African American businesswoman Annie Turbo Malone’s “The Nice Fantastic Hair Grower,” however she additionally joined Malone’s group of black girls gross sales brokers. A yr later, Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, the place she married ad-man Charles Joseph Walker, renamed herself “Madam C.J. Walker,” and with $1.25, launched her personal line of hair merchandise and straighteners for African American girls, “Madam Walker’s Fantastic Hair Grower.”

About
the Writer

Dave Martin

Dave joins NGPF with 15 years of instructing expertise in math and laptop science. After becoming a member of the New York Metropolis Instructing Fellows program and incomes a Grasp’s diploma in Training from Tempo College, his instructing profession has taken him to New York, New Jersey and a summer season within the north of Ghana. Dave firmly believes that monetary literacy is significant to creating well-rounded college students which might be ready for a posh and extremely aggressive world. Throughout what free time two younger daughters will permit, Dave enjoys video video games, Dungeons & Dragons, cooking, gardening, and taking naps.

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