What was Madam cj Walkers education?

Answer 1

Madam C. J. Walker, who was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 in Delta, Louisiana, received very little formal education as a child. During the late 1800s and early 1900s very few Americans completed high school or college. In Sarah's case, there were almost no public schools for black children in Louisiana because the state and local legislators refused to fund education for African Americans during that time. She learned some rudimentary skills in her church, but was mostly illiterate until after she moved to St. Louis and was exposed to more educated African Americans in her church, St. Paul AME. When her daughter enrolled in elementary school in St. Louis during the late 1880s, she began to learn along with her. Some of her daughter's teachers and principals were African Americans who had attended Oberlin College, one of the first American universities to enroll black students. Eventually she is said to have taken night school classes in St. Louis. Once she founded her hair care products company, she hired a personal tutor, Alice Kelly, who had been a teacher at a private black school in Kentucky, to help her improve her reading and writing skills. Walker, like many American entrepreneurs of her era, was considered a "self-taught" woman. She was a life-long learner who enjoyed reading the newspaper and keeping abreast of current events. She installed a library in her home, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

Source: On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles.

Answer 2

Madam Walker, who was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana in 1867, grew up during an era when the Louisiana state legislature and local parish governments refused to appropriate funds for public education for black children. She received very little formal education as a child, but is believed to have learned rudimentary reading and arithmetic in her family church where Curtis Pollard was the minister. Later, after she and her daughter moved to St. Louis in the late 1880s, she began to learn from her daughter, who attended the public schools there, and from some of the women in her church at St. Paul AME. She later said she attended night school to learn more. After she began to be successful in her hair care business, she hired a personal tutor. She had a thirst for knowledge and was very interested in current affairs and history. She was considered a "self-taught" or "self-educated" person as were many accomplished people during an era when American public school education was spotty in many parts of America and when only a few thousand people a year graduated from college in America.

Source: On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles

Original answer:

Madam CJ Walker did not attend school long enough as a child to learn how to read or write.