Her Dream of Dreams

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 nations history a noted philanthropist and champion of womens 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 transformationyears that trace a circuitous route across the countryremains 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.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