Most devotees of Madam C.J. Walker, the hair-care entrepreneur who became the nation’s first female self-made millionaire, know she married three times over the course of her life. The most consequential of those marriages was, of course, the third. The businesswoman married newspaper-ad salesman Charles Joseph Walker in 1906; not long after, she launched her hair business under her married name, quickly turning the moniker into an iconic brand. But the relationship quickly fell apart as Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, rose up in the business world, leading her to divorce Charles—and walk away with his name.
But what happened in her other two marriages? According to A’Lelia Bundles, the great-great granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker and author of the book that inspired Netflix’s miniseries Self Made—starring Octavia Spencer—both of Walker’s early relationships were deeply tumultuous and, occasionally, abusive.
Bundles has spent decades conducting journalistic research on Walker’s life, but she knows little about Moses McWilliams, Walker’s first husband, beyond what she could glean from speeches Walker made. In them, her ancestor claimed that she was forced to get married at 14 by her cruel brothers-in-law. Walker and McWilliams married in 1882; three years later, they had a daughter, Lelia McWilliams, whose name would later be changed to A’Lelia Walker. She would be the hair-care mogul’s only child. The marriage ultimately dissolved in 1887, when Walker was 20 years old.
While some have theorized that McWilliams was lynched in a race riot, Bundles said there’s absolutely no proof of that. It is assumed, however, that the marriage ended because he either left Walker or died.
Walker later moved to St. Louis to be closer to her brothers, where she married a laundry worker named John Davis in 1894. Based on Bundles’s research, it’s likely that the future millionaire was facing economic setbacks at that point, which would be compounded by the deaths of two of her brothers. “So, she got married to a guy who she thought was going to make life a little better,” Bundles said.
Bundles has pieced together clues about the dissolution of the marriage from surprising sources, like A’Lelia’s school records. One year, the student had perfect attendance; another, her attendance was extremely spotty. “I don’t know whether she was sick, or whether John Davis was acting up,” Bundles said. “But there was some upheaval in their lives, and then that marriage ends [in 1903].”
When Walker died in 1919, Davis attempted to get money from her estate. F.B. Ransom, Walker’s lawyer, quickly took action, issuing an attorney to interview women in St. Louis who were friends with Walker at that time for a deposition of sorts. Bundles was able to acquire that record and learn more about the rocky marriage. “He drank too much,” she said. “He ran around on her. He hit her.”
Walker later moved to Denver, where she worked as a pharmacist, in addition to selling hair products for cosmetics entrepreneur Annie Malone (played in Self Made by Carmen Ejogo). It’s there that she met C.J. Walker, whom she married in 1906. That relationship is the only marriage of hers depicted in Self Made, with Blair Underwood playing Walker as a loyal husband who gets bitter about his wife’s business success and begins an affair with another woman. In episode four, he asks for a divorce and demands that Walker change her name; she refuses. In real life, the pair divorced in 1912, and Walker never did show interest in changing her name, especially not after it became a lucrative brand.
