10. She Was Friends With Other Black Visionaries
As her company and wealth grew, and perhaps in response to the racial violence in neighboring Illinois, Madam C. J. Walker relocated her base of operations from Indianapolis, Indiana to Harlem, New York. Early 20th century Harlem was a Mecca for Black artists, activists, and visionaries. She became involved in the social and political scene soon after moving to Harlem and became friends with many of the prominent Black figures of the era.
Walker counted W. E. B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Mary McLeod Bethune among her friends in the fight for equality and justice. W. E. B Du Bois is best known for his incredible writings The Souls of Black Folk and Black Reconstruction in America. He and fellow activist Booker T. Washington came down on opposing sides on the fight over Washington’s proposed Atlanta compromise that would have had Black Americans submitting to white political rule. Du Bois wanted nothing less than full and equal rights for Black Americans.
Mary McLeod Bethune was an educator and civil rights activist who founded a private school for Black children that eventually went on to become Bethune-Cookman University, a private historically black college. Like Walker, McLeod was born to former slaves and worked in cotton fields herself as a child. She went on to work on the presidential campaign of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and served as a member of his Black Cabinet.