16. She picked and pried with the gall of an explorer. Looking for stimulants, she mined old kitchen knowledge of castor balms and plant oils to create hair salves. She experimented with store-bought tonics, like St. Louis black beauty entrepreneur Annie Malone’s “Great Wonderful Hair Grower.” Because she had no success making a home-grown formula, she started working for Malone in 1902, as one of her assistants. She married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a few years later.

17. At night, God supposedly visited the washerwoman. “God answered my prayer. In a dream, a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. I made up my mind I would begin to sell it." Sarah Walker concocted pomades and tonics stirred by the big black hand of God Himself: Vegetable Shampoo, Wonderful Hair Grower, Vanishing Cream. God’s dreams — cleansing water to rid the hair of lice, petroleum jelly to make the hair grow straight, vanishing cream to make the skin grow fair — sold by the thousands.

18. The final paragraph of her obituary pronounces only on the mansion, as if it were the   true legend for posterity the Madame left behind, how a person who nearly was born property herself ended up owning some on the banks of the Hudson Valley: “The house, which is one of the show places in the vicinity, is three stories high and consists of thirty or more rooms. She had installed in this home an $8,000 organ with furnishings, including bronze and marble statuary, cut glass candelabra, tapestries, and paintings, said to be of intrinsic beauty and value.”

19. Entrepreneurship origin stories serve to 1) convince potential consumers to behave as if they are part of a movement  and 2) as insurance against claims the business is not original. In the case of Walker and her million-dollar company, which streamlined black domestic knowledge about hair care into a sleek, stackable product, divine intervention was a discerning brand. She knew, and she was, her consumer base. This is to say: hair straightening