The Black Woman Who Built an Empire Before Pitch Decks

She didn’t start with a pitch deck. She started in a tiny one‑room beauty shop in Atlantic City in 1913, doing hair by day and knocking doors to sell her own products at night.

She died a millionaire whose company employed around 500 people and worked with roughly 45,000 sales agents worldwide.

And most people have never heard her name.

Welcome to Day 7 of Deleted History: 28 Black Women They Prayed You'd Never Learn About...

Sara Spencer Washington didn’t wait for help.

She created the Apex News & Hair Company in a market that didn’t even think Black women were worth advertising to.

By the 1940s, “Madame Washington” had turned that one-room shop into an empire - literally.

She created a manufacturing lab producing hundreds of products, beauty colleges in about a dozen states, international schools, and a sales force stretching from Haiti to South Africa.

She was what we’d now call a high‑growth founder, long before anyone used that language.

But here’s what really matters:

She refused to accept the economic rules written for Black people in her era.

When Black golfers were barred from local courses, she built the Apex Golf Club, one of the first Black‑owned golf courses in the country.

When her neighbors couldn’t afford heat in the Great Depression, she delivered coal herself.

Even in death, her business was estimated at over a million dollars, employed about 500 workers, and was supported by tens of thousands of independent agents—many of them Black women using sales to buy their own freedom.

Her beauty colleges graduated thousands of students.

Her slogan was simple and brutally clear: “Now is the time to plan your future by learning a depression-proof business.”

She understood that sales was not a dirty word; it was a survival strategy.

A century later, Black women are still carrying the economy on their backs—and still getting the smallest share of the rewards.

Black women are the fastest‑growing group of entrepreneurs in the U.S., now running roughly 2.1–2.7 million businesses and generating close to 100 billion dollars in revenue.

But less than 2% make over one million dollars.

So yes, Black women are starting and growing businesses faster than anyone else.

And no, the system is still not built for us to win at the scale we deserve.

Don't wait for permission, take what's yours.

And join me at Black Women Sell Live!

🔗 Black Women Sell Live — September 25–27, 2026 - Atlanta

https://lnkd.in/gkZuHKJQ

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