Sarah Breedlove Walker, a.k.a. Madame C. J. Walker

“I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”

—Sarah Breedlove Walker

Born this day in 1867: Sarah Breedlove Walker, a.k.a. Madame C. J. Walker (1867–1919), business woman, philanthropist, first African American woman millionaire

Sarah Breedlove was born the daughter of sharecroppers in Louisiana and was orphaned by age six. She was married at age 14, widowed by age 20. For 18 years she raised her daughter, A’Lelia, by herself. Breedlove worked as a washerwoman and studied at night. After years of experimenting, she developed a hairstyling product for African American women and began selling it locally.

In 1906 she moved to Colorado and married newspaperman Charles J. Walker. In Colorado she set up a successful mail order business to sell the “Walker Method.”

Her business grew and she hired women as agents to sell her product door-to-door. She rebranded herself as Madame C.J. Walker and moved her company headquarters to Indianappolis in 1910. At the height of its success the Madame C.J. Walker Company employed 3,ooo agents in the U.S. and throughout the Caribbean. Walker carefully trained her agents to use and sell her products (a range of products and appliances) and aggressively promoted her products through advertising and personal tours.

Between her successful business and shrewd real estate investments, Walker amassed a fortune. She became a very generous philanthropist. Among her causes were education, anti-lynching campaigns, homes for the aged, and the NAACP. She even encouraged her agents to engage in philanthropy, giving out cash prizes to the Walker agent social clubs that performed the most community work.

Walker established a trust fund to support her favorite causes and left the bulk of her state to A’Leila, including her business (in which A’Leila had played an active part). A’Leila (A’Leila Walker Kennedy) went on to be an important founder of the Harlem Renaissance.

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Fanny Garrison Villard

Born this day in 1844: Fanny Garrison Villard (1844–1928), philanthropist, social activist, suffragist, pacifist

Fanny Garrison Villard was born Helen Francis Garrison, daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, in 1844. She married Henry Villard, a businessman and publisher, in 1866. The couple had four children.

Villard was generous with both her time and her money. She first became involved with the Diet Kitchen Association in 1878. The organization provided nutritional foods and certified milk to sick people in the slums of New York. She served as its president from 1898 to 1922. She was also involved in many charities serving women and African Americans, including the New York Infirmary for Women and Children, the Woman's Exchange, the Riverside Rest Association, the Consumers’ League, the Household Economics Association, the Working Woman’s Protective Association, the Columbus Hill Day Nursery for African American children, and the NAACP.

Villard promoted higher education for women and helped found Barnard College,  the American College for Women in Constantinople, and the Harvard Annex (which became Radcliffe College). She also gave financial support to African American schools in both New York and in the South, including the Hampton Institute in Virginia.

In her later years she turned politically active and threw herself wholeheartedly into both the suffrage and pacifism. She belonged to several suffrage organizations, holding offices and serving on committees. She attended demonstrations, gave countless speeches, and petitioned state legislatures. She was equally passionate about peace and U.S. neutrality in the World War, even founding her own Women’s Peace Society in 1919 when other organizations to which she belonged failed to embrace disarmament and total nonresistance.

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Anna M. Richardson Harkness

From “The Commonwealth Legacy at 90”

Born this day in 1837: Anna M. Richardson Harkness (1837–1926), philanthropist and one of the first women in the nation to establish a philanthropic foundation.

Anna Harkness was heir to a fortune amassed by her husband, Stephen V, Harkness, an early investor in Standard Oil. She was a generous philanthropist, giving to churches and to missions both at home and abroad. Eventually she saw the wisdom of bringing organization and focus to her philanthropic work. In 1918 she established the Commonwealth Fund with an endowment of $10 million dollars. Her son, Edward Harkness, served as its first president. The family continued to contribute to the endowment over the years, to the tune of more than $53 million.

Among the Commonwealth Fund’s missions was the advancement of healthcare. To that end it contributed to the building of hospitals and clinics (especially in rural areas) and medical schools and established a fellowship program to bring young professionals from the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and other English-speaking countries to study in the United States. The Commonwealth Fund continues today as one of the country’s major philanthropies.

Harkness was adept at managing her wealth and grew her $50 million dollar inheritance to a fortune of $85 million. Much of that fortune she devoted to personal giving. The New York Public Library, the Musuem of Natural History, the New York Zoological Society, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art are counted among her beneficiaries. She and her son Edward also donated a 22-acre parcel of land to build a new facility for Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Presbyterian Hospital.

In her will Harnkness left $36 million dollars to charity, including an additional $22 million for the Commonwealth Fund. Despite her generosity, “Anna Harnkess” was not a household name. She did not trumpet her philanthropy, but preferred anonymous giving.