Synopsis

The Introduction presents the book’s main argument that Madam C.J. Walker was not simply a charitable entrepreneur, but rather a great African American and American philanthropist who practiced a distinctive racialized and gendered approach to giving that simultaneously relieved immediate felt-needs in her community and thwarted the systemic oppression of the Jim Crow system. Her model of giving contrasted greatly with prevailing contemporary approaches by elite white male and female philanthropists who waited until late in their lives to give after accumulating or acquiring wealth.

Freeman explores reasons for the absence of Walker and African American donors from major historical fields that have examined philanthropic giving in America. It uses black women’s history to overcome this omission by situating Walker within the larger context of the activism, community work, and fundraising of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black clubwomen, churchwomen, and educators, constructing generosity as a framework for naming and reclaiming black women as philanthropists.

Walker, as an exemplar of black women’s giving, challenged core assumptions about the relationship between philanthropy and wealth, women, African Americans, and business. The result is a presentation of black women’s generosity as a long-standing, deeply-rooted historical tradition of philanthropy that is alive and well today.

The early life experiences of Sarah Breedlove and their influences in shaping Madam C.J. Walker’s identity, sense of responsibility to others, and philanthropic giving began to form when she was a poor, widowed migrant moving around the South dependent upon a robust philanthropic network of black civil society institutions and black women who cared for her during the most difficult period of her life. She was socialized into respectability, racial uplift ideology, generosity, and philanthropic giving by a group of St. Louis black churchwomen and clubwomen, whose support and mentoring enabled her to change her life course.

Through her early membership and involvement with key networks of women, including washerwomen, the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church’s Mite Missionary Society, and the Court of Calanthe fraternal order, Madam Walker’s moral imagination was the foundation for her philanthropic life. It situates Walker within the culture of the AME Church which immersed her in faith, black history, self-help and racial uplift ideologies, education, activism, and internationalism.

Freeman’s research establishes the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company of Indiana as a “race company,” one organized by and for the benefit of African Americans. It was the institutional manifestation of Walker’s moral imagination and philanthropic commitments. Its structure and operations blended Walker’s commercial and philanthropic goals to provide the gift of opportunity to black women through employment despite the larger constraints of low-wage, exclusionary Jim Crow labor markets. Thousands of black women became financially independent, cared for their families, and gave back to their communities in the quest for freedom through their employment in the company as sales agents, beauty culturists or salon owners.

This approach was grounded in black self-help ideology and the health and hygiene work of black clubwomen. The Walker Company effectively became a third “C” that Walker added to the Church and the Club as platforms for black women’s racial uplift activities. Freeman addresses critiques of the company related to women’s standards of beauty and multi-level marketing business strategies. It explores Walker’s business and familial-like relationship with key trusted advisor Freeman B. Ransom, a black corporate attorney, whom she employed to help run the company. He gave organization to her vision, ran daily operations, and administered her philanthropic giving while she traveled promoting the company. Their partnership in operating the company for both commercial gain and philanthropic uplift created the hub for implementing her gospel of giving.

Walker’s gift of education through her national network of beauty schools served as a model of urban industrial vocational education at the same time that Booker T. Washington’s southern rural model of industrial education was prominent. Washington’s Tuskegee model has been critiqued as not successful in addressing black educational needs despite its proliferation because it appeased the white South and focused on the fading agricultural economy. Walker’s beauty schools, in contrast, offered an urban alternative for migrating black women to earn credentials enabling their gainful employment in the emerging industrial economies of the North, Midwest, and South.

The curriculum of the Walker beauty schools and its blending of theory, technique, and business management principles supported graduates’ success. This gift of education aligned Walker with other educator-philanthropists of her era, such as Mary McLeod Bethune, Lucy Laney, and Charlotte Hawkins Brown—whose schools she also funded. Walker’s partnership with southern black schools included donations in exchange for commitments to offer her curriculum. While only a few colleges took up the offer, participating schools split profits of beauty culture sales made by students with the Walker Company. The program was Walker’s effort to grow her market, extend opportunity to students, and financially support the schools, which simultaneously created a relationship between industrial philanthropy and black education, and the value of industrial vocational education to northern black urban communities.

Walker’s gift of political and social activism and her leveraging of the number and voices of her agents to challenge Jim Crow was reflective of leading black women’s clubs and fraternal organizations of the day. Madam Walker organized her sales agents into local clubs and a national umbrella association to legitimize beauty culture as a profession, strengthen relations between them, and enlist them in doing charity and advocacy work in their communities that would last long after her death.

The National Beauty Culturists’ and Benevolent Association of Madam C.J. Walker Agents, Inc. developed a model of associationalism, ritualism, and activism that galvanized Walker agents to serve their communities and the cause of racial uplift. Through it, agents regularly donated money to black schools and other organizations, held fundraising events, organized programs, and cared for the vulnerable in their communities. Together, they sent a resolution to President Woodrow Wilson demanding legislative action against lynching. Walker’s unique ability to interact with black women across class differences helped Walker agents stake claims for themselves as respectable professionals, perform charitable works in black communities, and use their formidable numbers to speak out against lynching and Jim Crow.

The range of material resources that Walker gifted to black individuals and organizations demonstrated her gospel of giving. Administered by her legal advisor, Freeman B. Ransom, these gifts reflected Walker’s philanthropic motivations during a period of significant financial growth for her company in the early 1910s. Drawing insights from the types of gifts given and the kinds and locations of recipients supported, the author demonstrates how black women’s philanthropy moved through black communities around the country. As a result, social needs were met, and a national infrastructure of organizations and networks was gradually constructed to navigate the debilitating effects of Jim Crow, and, eventually, dismantle the institution.

The book presents four categories of giving by Walker: monetary, tangible non-monetary items, employment, and institution-building. It considers organizations she funded such as the colored branch of the YMCA and black schools and social services agencies, which were typically run by black women. Walker also engaged in criminal justice advocacy by funding attainment of pardons for black men jailed for murder. The geography of Walker’s giving emphasizes the importance of the cities of St. Louis, Missouri, and Indianapolis, Indiana, in her life story, as she maintained philanthropic commitments in those cities throughout her lifetime and afterwards through her estate.

In Chapter 6, the author tells the full story of Walker’s last will and testament, which has been used by scholars to document her generosity because of its numerous charitable provisions. To date, scholars have missed the discrepancy between Walker’s intended charitable provisions and those actually executed by her daughter, A’Lelia, as executor. Consequently, only 1/10 of Walker’s estate went to charity rather than her intended 1/3, a reduction explained in part by Walker’s own exorbitant spending during her lifetime and that of her daughter afterwards. Walker lived during a transitional period in which women’s wills were rare—but becoming more common—and African American wills were historically restricted. However, she used testamentary documents to navigate her social position with respect to race, class, and gender, and asserted her identity as an honorable, respectable, God-fearing, and generous black female business owner under the absurdities and indignities of Jim Crow. It told succeeding generations how she wished to be remembered, and signaled women’s and African Americans’ increasing use of testamentary tools to preserve their property rights. It also set the tone for how subsequent generations would remember and pay homage to Walker as a great race woman who inspired and uplifted African Americans.