Octavia Spencer, LeBron James to bring first self-made female millionaire to Netflix

One year before women had the right to vote in America, Madam C.J. Walker of Irvington became the first female self-made millionaire in the country.

The story of how a black woman, born to newly freed slaves and orphaned at 7, went from earning $1.50 as a washerwoman to running a business empire selling hair care products targeted at African-American women is a story that has beguiled everyone from her neighbors in Irvington to historians who would chronicle her life. 

Along the way, Walker also became a champion for civil rights and a philanthropist dedicated to improving the lives of others.

SOLD: Walker's Villa Lewaro in Irvington sold to buyer

Now her  inspiring story will be told  in an eight-episode Netflix series, starring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer as Walker.

The series — Spencer and NBA star LeBron James are executive producers — is based on the book “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madame C.J. Walker” by A’Lelia Bundles, Walker’s great-great-granddaughter.

A release date for the series has yet to be announced by Netflix.

In 1918, at age 50, Walker moved into her newly built “permanent” home — a 34-room, 20,000-square-foot mansion on North Broadway in Irvington. Designed by Vertner Tandy, the first African-American architect registered in New York, the mansion is estimated to have cost $250,000.

Dubbed “Villa Lewaro,” the estate, less than five miles from John D. Rockefeller’s Kykuit and about a mile from Jay Gould’s Lyndhurst, was meant to inspire others, said Bundles, a former deputy bureau chief of ABC News in Washington.

While other tycoons who owned neighboring estates along the Hudson River situated their mansion to maximize the views of the river, Walker wanted her white Italianate villa house and its red-tiled roof to be seen from the village’s main thoroughfare.

“The fact that she built her house on North Broadway says a lot. She wanted people to be able to see it,” said Bundles. “She wanted people to stop saying that black people cannot achieve."

A Nov. 4, 1917 article in The New York Times under the headline  “Wealthiest Negro Woman’s Suburban Mansion,” mentioned the reactions of villagers, who upon spotting Walker in her “high-powered motor car” realized that she was the owner of the dwelling.

“‘Impossible!’ they exclaimed. ‘No woman of her race could afford such a place,’ ” the newspaper reported.

“I know she said she wanted this house to be an inspiration to young black children, that she wanted them to see what was possible, what somebody could achieve in a generation,” said Bundles “Because she really was that first generation after slavery and she was determined not only to have success for herself but to open the door for other people. The house for her was a symbol of that.”

The mansion was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 for its architectural significance and in 2014 was designated a National Treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The house, in private hands since 1993, was recently sold.

'From the washroom to the boardroom'

Walker's life is a compelling story, made for the screen.

Born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, in 1867, the daughter of sharecroppers, she was the first child in her family to be free-born. After being married at 14 and widowed by 20, Walker, by now a mother of a 2-year-old daughter, moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where her brothers had established themselves as barbers.

It was from them that she received early lessons in treating the scalp. She herself had been contending with hair falling out and scalp infections. After years of working as a washerwoman for wealthy white families, she decided to supplement her income by working as a sales agent in 1904 for Annie Malone, an African-American businesswoman selling hair-care products.  

The following year, she moved to Denver with her daughter and continued to sell products there while also working as a cook and a laundress. Within a year, Walker left the company after a disagreement with Malone and decided todevelop her own line of products.

In 1906, she married Charles Walker, a newspaper sales agent who was well-versed in marketing. She adopted the name Madam C.J. Walker as she started selling “Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower” and vegetable shampoo in Denver and the surrounding area.

“Colorado had a really small black population, so she knew she would have to move to grow her business,” said Bundles.

Two years later, the couple moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they opened a beauty parlor and established Lelia College to train “hair culturists” in the “Walker Method.”

“Madam Walker was a master marketer. But her brilliance was in taking it to another level by training women, by traveling, by making very motivational speeches and by providing independent income for women who otherwise would have to be maids and sharecroppers,” said Bundles.

While her daughter Lelia (she would change her name to A’Lelia in the '20s) ran the operations from Pittsburgh, Walker set up a factory in Indianapolis and, in 1910, established the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. The business proved to be wildly successful, with Walker traveling throughout the country and to Caribbean nations to grow her business.

Around this time, she also began making her mark in philanthropy, starting with a $1,000 check to a local YMCA for black men.

Her profile as a community and civil rights activist grew as she helped fund a national anti-lynching initiative, gave money to the Tuskegee Institute and to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

By 1913, her daughter persuaded her mother to establish an office and beauty salon in Harlem.

“It was a very sophisticated place and it was becoming the mecca for African-American politics and culture,” said Bundles. “And A’Lelia was feeling a little bored in Pittsburgh and Harlem was much more interesting.”

Walker built a large town house at 136th Street in 1915, complete with a beauty parlor and a beauty school. “Being in New York was such a pivotal point for them. It raised their profile,” said Bundles. “It was like being on Rodeo drive. If you were a big brand, you had to be in New York.”

The house would also become a gathering place for political activists and the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes.

The following year, she hired Tandy who had designed her Harlem townhome, to build her “dream of dream” homes in Irvington.

A 'dream of dream' home

The white stucco house with a red terracotta roof was named Villa Lewaro for Walker's daughter, A'Lelia Walker Robinson, as an anagram from two letters of each name.

Walker told her friend Ida B. Wells, the journalist and anti-lynching activist, that after working so hard all her life, she wanted a place to relax and garden and entertain her friends. 

A gathering to celebrate the opening of Villa Lewaro honored Emmett Scott, then the special assistant to the U. S. Secretary of War in Charge of Negro Affairs and the highest-ranking African American in the federal government. 

But Walker didn't enjoy the house for long. She died the following year.

Take an interactive tour of the house here

Villa Lewaro - Google Arts & Culture

Her daughter, who inherited the house, continued the tradition of hosting events, until her death in 1931. It was then bequeathed to the NAACP as per Walker’s wishes for the estate to “be left to some cause that will be beneficial to the race, a sort of monument.”

The NAACP, facing dire financial straits during the Depression, couldn’t afford to maintain the property and sold it almost immediately. It changed hands a few times, including serving as a convalescent home for a time.

In 1993, Harold E. Doley Jr., founder of Doley Securities, the oldest African- American owned investment banking firm in the nation, and his wife, Helena, purchased and restored the property.

“She has been an inspiration for us,” said Helena Doley. “She had every possible disadvantage, yet she was able to help so many."

After 25 years of ownership, the Doleys sold the property to a private buyer last month.

Before the sale, the couple, working with the National Trust, secured a historic preservation easement for the estate last December to ensure the property’s architectural integrity would be preserved.

“Madam C.J. Walker’s Villa Lewaro is more than just an irreplaceable landmark,” said Brent Leggs, Director of the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. “Villa Lewaro is a living monument to Madam Walker’s proud legacy, and embodies the optimism and perseverance of American entrepreneurship.”

Throughout her time at Villa Lewaro, Helena Doley said she has felt guided by Madam Walker’s spirit.

“She said she promoted herself from the washroom to the boardroom," said Helena Doley. "Her legacy, I think, is one of not feeling that situations we are born into define who we are.”

Over the years, the Doleys did a lot to promote Walker’s vision by organizing various galas and benefits for nonprofits and arts groups. They opened their home to the Westchester Philharmonic and were the hosts of a benefit for the United Negro College Fund, among many other events.

For Bundles, who once stayed as an overnight guest at the house, the Doleys have done much to honor Walker’s legacy.

“When they hosted a benefit for the Westchester Philharmonic, I stayed overnight in A’Lelia Walker’s room,” said Bundles. “A tent had been set up on the lawn for dinner and jazz was playing. The Doleys, who are from New Orleans, had all this great food coming up and wafting through the house. That was the moment I felt that the house had really come back to life. That it was the entertainment space, the convening space that Madam Walker had intended it to be.”

Helena Doley believes Walker’s spirit of entrepreneurship should inspire women for generations to come.

In fact, Sundial Brands, a manufacturer of skincare and hair care products for people of color, launched a new hair care line called the "Madam C.J. Walker Beauty Culture" in 2016, sold exclusively at Sephora.

“The magnificence of the newsletters to her sales agents on how to market the product seasonally and how to present oneself are marketing techniques we use today,” said Doley. “She was a woman ahead of her times.”

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is the new audience strategist and a member of the Editorial Board for The Journal News/lohud, part of the USA Today Network.