Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C. J. Walker

""I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South; I was promoted from there to the wash-tub; then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations."
--Madam C. J. Walker, National Negro Business League Convention, 1912
Now, from a writer acclaimed for her novels and the memoir Crossed Over, a remarkable biography of a truly heroic figure.
Madam C. J. Walker created a cosmetics empire and became known as the first female self-made millionaire in this nation's history, a noted philanthropist and champion of women's rights and economic freedom. These achievements seem nothing less than miraculous given that she was born, in 1867, to former slaves in a hamlet on the Mississippi River. How she came to live on another river, the Hudson, in a Westchester County mansion, and in a New York City town house, is at once inspirational and mysterious, because for all that is known about the famous entrepreneur, much that occurred before her magnificent transformation--years that trace a circuitous route across the country--remains obscure.
By breathing life into scattered clues and dry facts, and with a deep understanding of the times and places through which Madam Walker moved, Beverly Lowry tells a story that stretches from the antebellum South to the Harlem Renaissance and bridges nearly a century of our history in her search for the distant truths of a woman who defied all odds and redefined conventional expectations.
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"Wherever there was one colored person, whether it was a city, a town, or a puddle by the railroad tracks, everybody knew her name."
--Violet Davis Reynolds,Stenographer, Madam C. J. Walker Co "From the Hardcover edition.