Sarah Breedlove Walker

Sarah Breedlove Walker was born on December 23, 1867 in Louisiana, the daughter of Owen and Minerva  Breedlove,  recently freed slaves.  Sarah, who was their fifth child, was the first in her family to be born free.  She became an orphan at the age of seven and went to live with her sister in Mississippi.  Presumably she picked cotton and did household work to earn her keep. 

At age 14, to escape both her oppressive working environment and frequent mistreatment by her brother in law, she married Moses McWilliams.  In 1885 she gave birth to a beautiful daughter, A’Lelia. Two years later Moses was murdered by a white lynch mob and Sara and her daughter moved to St.Louis.  She found work as a washerwoman earning $1.50 a day, which was enough to send A’Lelia to public school.  Sara herself attended night school when she could. While in St. Louis Sarah met her second husband, Charles J. Walker, who was in advertising and later assisted her in promoting her business.

In 1905 she had dream that revealed to her a formula of pomade to straighten Negro hair. The idea was first conceived in Cherry Creek, a prosperous mining town in Denver CO.  Sarah traveled from Pueblo, to Trinidad, to Colorado Springs and back to Denver selling her product. She mixed the ingredients herself in washtubs and sold it door to door.  She was very successful and “The Walker Method” and “Madam C.J Walker”were born.  She built a factory, recruited sales agents who dressed in starched white shirts and long black skirts taking the Walker products to homes all over the U.S. and the Caribbean. 

Sarah organized her 3,000 employees into social and philanthropic clubs, held national conventions that were attended by delegates from these clubs.  She rewarded her employees for high sales and those who did the most charity work.

By 1910 Sarah was a millionaire and one of the best known black women in America.  She made large donations to Black and Christian charities and endowed scholarships for women at Tuskegee Institute, She founded philanthropies that included educational scholarships and donations to homes for the elderly, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the National Conference on Lynching, among other organizations focused on improving the lives of African-Americans. She also donated the largest amount of money by an African-American toward the construction of an Indianapolis YMCA in 1913.

 

Sara Josephine Baker..."Doctor Jo"

When I hear the name Josephine Baker I think of the beautiful and exotic actress, singer and dancer. You probably do too.  But there is another Josephine Baker that few people know about.  Sara Josephine Baker was born November 15, 1873 in Poughkeepsie New York into a wealthy Quaker family She had fond memories of a happy childhood and a good and supportive relationship with both of her parents.  Her Father Daniel Mosher Baker was a lawyer.  Her mother Jenny Harwood Brown was one of the first women to graduate from Vassar College. Sara was raised with the expectation that she would also attend college but her plans changed when her father and brother died suddenly. Newly responsible for the family’s finances, she gave up her scholarship and applied to medical school instead. In 1894, Baker enrolled at the Woman’s Medical College of the New York Infirmary, originally founded by pioneering physician Elizabeth Blackwell and her sister Emily Blackwell. While associating with the first generation of women to attend medical school, Baker was introduced to some powerful female role models, including faculty member Mary Putnam Jacobi. After graduating in 1898, second in her class of eighteen, Baker negotiated a year’s intern-ship at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston, where she worked at an outpatient clinic serving some of the city’s poorest residents. She developed a keen interest in the connection between poverty and ill health, which led her to a commitment to social medicine that would shape the rest of her career.

 Later she opened a private practice. After earning only $185 in her first year, she became an inspector for the N.Y. City Health Department. Although she maintained her private practice she became involved in public health work with a special concern for lowering infant mortality rate. 

In New York City, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the infant mortality rate was very high. Often there were 1,500 deaths per week during the heat of summer.  In 1908 she tackled this problem with a team of thirty nurses.  They went door to door, advising mothers on breastfeeding, cleanliness and good ventilation.  The mortality rate dropped considerably, which resulted in the establishment of a Bureau of Child Hygiene with Dr. Jo, as her patients had begun calling her, as director.

Dr. Jo was a pioneer in preventive medicine and public health education.  She lectured throughout the United States on child hygiene and published five popular books on the subject in addition to more than 250 magazine articles.  Josephine Baker became the first woman to be a professional representative to the League of Nations representing the U.S. in the Health Committee. In her lifetime and largely because of her efforts, Dr. Baker saw the infant mortality rate in New York City from 111 to 66 per 1,000 births.

   

Emily Blackwell

Emily Blackwell was born on October 8, 1826 in Bristol, England.  Her family immigrated to America when she was five settling with friends in Cincinnati.  Emily was inspired by her older sister Elizabeth, one of the first women to receive a medical degree in the U.S. and she decided to follow in her footsteps and pursue a degree in medicine.  To earn money for her education she took a teaching position but confided in her diary: “Oh, for life instead of stagnation. I long with such an intense longing for freedom, action, for life, and truth.”

Emily was rejected by eleven medical schools, including her sister’s alma mater in Geneva, New York.  In 1852 she was finally accepted at Chicago’s Rush Medical College, but the state medical society censured Rush for admitting a woman and she was asked to leave at the end of her first year. She joined her sister at her charity dispensary in New York City and gained as much practical experience as she could.  Finally she was accepted at the medical college of Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Upon graduation with honors, she went to Scotland for further study with Sir James Simpson, a pioneer in the use of chloroform during childbirth.  When she returned to America she rejoined her sister, who had recently established the New York Infirmary for Women and Children as a teaching clinic for women doctors and a place where women could consult physicians of their own gender.  In 1858 Emily was left in control of the infirmary when Elizabeth went abroad for a year for further study.

In 1860 the infirmary moved to larger quarters. The sisters established an on-site nursing school and medical college.  For thirty years Emily served as dean of the medical school and professor of obstetrics and gynecology.  In 1898 the sisters felt that their school was no longer needed as Cornell had begun to accept women students.  During its thirty one years of operation the Woman’s Medical College had graduated 364 women doctors.

The New York Infirmary for Woman and Children is still in operation today.  One of Emily’s former pupils reminisced: “She inspired us all with the vital feeling that we are still on trial and that, for women who meant to be physicians, no educational standards could be too high.  I think not many of us realized that we were going out into the world as test cases, but Dr. Blackwell did.” 

Anna Mary Robertson

Anna Mary Robertson

“I would draw the picture (on butcher paper) and then color it with grape juice or berries…”

Anna was born on September 7, 1860 to a large farm family near Greenwich, New York.  She had no formal schooling other than a few months at a local one room country school.

She left home at twelve to earn her living as a domestic.  After fifteen years as a paid housekeeper she married Thomas Salmon Moses who was a farm worker. They settled in Virginia where she bore ten children, five of whom died as infants.

Her interest in art was expressed throughout her life, including embroidery of pictures with yarn, until arthritis made this pursuit too painful. The family returned to New York State in 1905 and she turned to painting at the age of 78.  Her first work was done in exterior house paint, on “an old piece of canvas which had been used for mending a threshing machine cover.”

Anna put several of her paintings for sale with some of her other craftwork at a local drug store.  I vacationing New York City art collector bought them all and went to her farm house to purchase fifteen others.  He placed three of them in the Museum of Modern Art.  The following year she had a one woman show at a well known gallery and at the age of eighty became an overnight success.  Anna charmed wherever she sent.  She was a tiny, lively woman with mischievous grey eyes, a quick wit but she could be sharp-tongued or stern when necessary.