Born into an African American family a few years after the end of the Civil War, the woman who became known as Madam C. J. Walker entered a world where slavery was still a very raw wound in American society. Although she was orphaned at a young age, C. J. Walker quickly learned about the world around her and how to adapt. The children of sharecroppers, she and her sister worked in cotton fields until Walker married at the age of fourteen. Eventually,...