# 3181 - 1998 32c Black Heritage: Madam C. J. Walker
1998 32¢ Madam C.J. Walker
Black Heritage
City: Indianapolis, IN
Quantity: 45,000,000
Printed By: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Lithographed
Perforations: 11.2
Color: Sepia and black
Birth Of Madam C.J. Walker
Breedlove was one of six children born to Louisiana sharecroppers and the first one to be born free after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Both of her parents died by the time she was seven years old, leading the orphan to move to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where she became a domestic worker.
Breedlove married when she was 14, possibly to escape an abusive brother-in-law. By the time she was 20, her husband died and she was raising a two-year-old daughter on her own. She would marry two more times in her life.
In 1888, Breedlove moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, where she worked as a laundress. She only made a dollar a day but was committed to making more so she could afford to give her daughter a formal education. She also wanted a better education for herself.
By 1917, Walker’s company was the largest African American-owned business in the United States and claimed to have trained almost 20,000 women. She took great pride in providing employment to African American women at a rate of $5 to $15 a day, when many white laborers were earning just $11 a week elsewhere. The popularity of her products eventually spread and they were sold in the Caribbean, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, and Costa Rica.
Walker died on May 25, 1919, in Irvington, New York. She was later recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the first female self-made millionaire in America.
Click here to view a website dedicated to Walker’s life and legacy.
1998 32¢ Madam C.J. Walker
Black Heritage
City: Indianapolis, IN
Quantity: 45,000,000
Printed By: Banknote Corporation of America
Printing Method: Lithographed
Perforations: 11.2
Color: Sepia and black
Birth Of Madam C.J. Walker
Breedlove was one of six children born to Louisiana sharecroppers and the first one to be born free after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Both of her parents died by the time she was seven years old, leading the orphan to move to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where she became a domestic worker.
Breedlove married when she was 14, possibly to escape an abusive brother-in-law. By the time she was 20, her husband died and she was raising a two-year-old daughter on her own. She would marry two more times in her life.
In 1888, Breedlove moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, where she worked as a laundress. She only made a dollar a day but was committed to making more so she could afford to give her daughter a formal education. She also wanted a better education for herself.
By 1917, Walker’s company was the largest African American-owned business in the United States and claimed to have trained almost 20,000 women. She took great pride in providing employment to African American women at a rate of $5 to $15 a day, when many white laborers were earning just $11 a week elsewhere. The popularity of her products eventually spread and they were sold in the Caribbean, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, and Costa Rica.
Walker died on May 25, 1919, in Irvington, New York. She was later recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the first female self-made millionaire in America.
Click here to view a website dedicated to Walker’s life and legacy.