Beauty Entrepreneur Sara Spencer Washington To Be Inducted Into New Jersey Hall Of Fame
With these words, a burning wish to learn and an optimistic worldview, Washington harnessed the electricity of her femininity to develop into 1 of the very first Black female millionaires. She constructed a natural beauty empire of products, educational facilities, publishing residences and prescription drugs that endured the Great Despair and racial segregation in Atlantic Metropolis, NJ.
“She has often been my favored historic character,” said Atlantic Town historian Vicki Gold Levi. “I’ve normally valued her as an activist, businesswoman, creator, marketer and innovator. I assumed she checked all the bins, and she did it against a whole lot of odds in people times with prejudice and segregation. She managed to increase over it and command everyone’s regard.”
As a youngster, Levi met Washington when her father, Atlantic City’s chief photographer, Al Gold, took her for a pay a visit to in the 1940s. Even though Levi is not able to remember particulars of that come across, she recalled that Washington was “very elegant” and fantastically dressed.
Washington, recognised in her heyday as “The Madam,” will be posthumously inducted into the New Jersey Corridor of Fame (NJHOF) this Slide. Washington will enter the Corridor in the business classification for her cosmological achievements along with fellow splendor entrepreneur Madam Louise Scott of Newark, the founder of Scott University of Beauty Society and elegance salon chains. Festivities will be held practically and aired on My9NJ in addition to NJ PBS, radio and social media, in mid-Oct.
Washington joins a huge-ranging and distinguished list of inductees which contains Alexander Hamilton, Martha Stewart, football gamers Harry Carson and Bart Oates, musician Southside Johnny Lyon and actor Jason Alexander. Launched in 2008, the NJHOF honors citizens who have made invaluable contributions to culture, the Backyard garden Point out and the earth.
Washington was between 23 honorees in five types this 12 months who ended up picked from a pool of 50 nominees next a general public vote in May possibly.
“We asked New Jerseyans to assist pick out the upcoming course of heroes and they sent,” said Jon F. Hanson, chairman of the NJHOF. “We are honored to celebrate the lives and contributions of these notable New Jersey luminaries and greats.”
Washington started the prestigious Apex Information and Hair Business in Atlantic Town in the early 20th Century. Afterwards, she established Apex Rest, a nursing house in the identical locale, and the Apex Golfing Club in Galloway Township, which was just one of the initially African-American-owned golf programs in the nation. For all of these achievements, Washington was named a single of the Most Distinguished Businesswomen at the New York World’s Honest in 1939.
Washington was born in Beckley, WV, deep in the Appalachian Mountains. She took benefit of key academic offerings all over the East Coastline. Washington attended the Lincoln Preparatory Faculty in Philadelphia, PA the Norfolk Mission College or university in Norfolk, VA (a privately funded general public faculty for African-American college students in Norfolk) and Columbia University in New York City in which she analyzed highly developed chemistry. This knowledge was beneficial in the producing of her have cosmetics later on in her job.
Out of university, the usually-chic go-getter started her vocation as a dressmaker. Afterwards, she opened a hairdresser store in Atlantic Metropolis. That go was fulfilled with displeasure from her mothers and fathers who needed their daughter to get up a more useful position—something alongside the lines of schoolteacher.
Not a single to conform to custom, Washington followed her cosmetology aspirations and started the Apex News and Hair Business in Atlantic Town in 1919 when she was 30 many years old.
Washington began her enterprise the same yr that marked the death of fellow natural beauty entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker.
Functioning the just one-place magnificence store by working day, Washington would go doorway-to-door at night advertising her Apex elegance products and solutions. Shortly, her business offered a wide range of items like pressing oils, warm combs, pomades, perfumes, elegance lotions and lipsticks. The exemplar’s empire grew to include things like attractiveness universities in the US and other countries, all specialised in teaching with her merchandise. One particular of the most effective educational facilities was The Apex Faculty of Beauty in Philadelphia, which became the oldest Black institution of natural beauty technology in the state. Each individual calendar year thereafter, far more than 25,000 learners (largely females) graduated from Washington’s schools to embark on their possess entrepreneurial endeavors. Practically 500 workforce labored in her suppliers across the nation with about 45,000 income agents.
Atlantic Town was the site of Washington’s research and output facility. There, 75 diverse items have been manufactured, offering work for extra than 200 persons who labored as chemists, lab technicians, instructors and income reps. By the mid-1940s, her elegance empire was approximated to have been truly worth roughly $500,000. On the heels of her success, her burgeoning empire inspired African-American organizations to assistance black firms.
All this was achieved with the forward-thinker’s mantra: “Now is the time to plan your long run by finding out a despair-proof small business,” a assertion Washington boldly declared amid World War I, which was adopted by the stock industry crash of 1929.
Her depression-proof business was rooted in the energy of femininity and Washington’s advisement to her workforce to “Be a woman,” according to Etta Nelson Francisco who labored at Apex Drug Retail outlet in the company’s golden age. A practitioner of her own preaching, Washington gave again to the metropolis. Soon after her recognition by the New York Entire world Fair, the entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist donated 20 acres of farmland as a campsite for African-American kids. She furnished a girls’ property to foster the academic factors of the Nationwide Youth Administration Plan, a New Deal agency that concentrated on providing operate and schooling for Americans between the ages of 16 and 25. At the time, it operated as component of the Functions Progress Administration and incorporated a Division of Negro Affairs.
Aside from her charity work, Washington was lively in political affairs. Her roles provided delegate to the Republican Nationwide Conference, president of the Northside Company and Qualified Women’s Club, and chair of the Industrial Office of the New Jersey Point out Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs. All through Earth War II, she served as secretary and treasurer of the New Jersey Welfare Fee on the Conditions of Urban Coloured Population.
“I really assume folks have to have to know of her legacy and what she did for Atlantic Town, not in conditions of providing work, but the way she integrated the city,” claimed Washington’s grandson Royston Scott.
In the mid-1940s, the city’s yearly Easter parade consisted strictly of white persons in advance of Washington took it upon herself to modify that. As a winner of anti-racism, Washington sponsored a Atlantic Metropolis Boardwalk parade each and every Easter beginning in 1946 to battle for racial justice.
According to Scott, when parade judges didn’t even look at products symbolizing Apex, Washington resolved to start off her possess Easter parade on the north aspect of city. It became these kinds of a major strike, entertainers at last determined to integrate the parade, Scott said.
Washington spearheaded the parade until her loss of life from purely natural triggers in 1953. Her adopted daughter, Joan Cross Washington, grew to become an heir to the corporation right up until it was ultimately offered. (Joan Cross was reportedly Washington’s niece, in accordance to Scott.)
“When my mom inherited the business, she acquired the ins and outs of the organization and became the spokeswoman for Apex,” said Scott.
Scott – a movie college student at New York University in the 1980s – was approached by Levi to make the documentary about his grandmother. The documentary shorter, “The Sara Spencer Washington Tale,” was unveiled in 2018.
“I grew up figuring out of her by way of Apex photographs of The Madame and inherited clothing. The legacy was there. There was a large amount of points packed away since of the sophisticated previous,” he claimed.
In the basement of his late mother’s household, Scott retrieved catalogs, a trove of black-and-white images and a leather-sure copy of Apex News and Hair Magazine. Articles from 1933 to 1938 contained stories of cap-and-gown-clad grads from Apex colleges, stylish hairstyles, and Apex hair goods.
“She was a function product,” explained Scott. “She transformed the lives of numerous in Atlantic City, primarily women of all ages. Throughout the Despair, females worked as laborers and domestics at a time when individuals didn’t have jobs and she enabled people today to become self-ample. You could understand a trade that gals usually desired to search great, and it was proven productive.”
During investigation for the film, Scott explained he would “look at the footage and start out crying. Not just since of my spouse and children, but mainly because I recognized how important it was and relocating that she impacted the life of all these black females in Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Chicago…”



Practically 70 years following her death, Washington’s legacy continues to have a profound influence on the town wherever it all started off. Aside from her posthumous induction into the New Jersey Hall of Fame this Oct, The Atlantic City Arts Basis partnered with Avanzar, formerly The Women’s Centre, to develop a mural of “The Madame.” The job was supported both equally the 48 Blocks AC and Avanzar’s “Girls as Leaders” initiatives.


Scott provided the picture for the mural, which he then donated to the Library of Congress.


Scott has also been in get hold of with the African-American Museum of Heritage and Cultures at the Smithsonian so that pictures of The Madame can be archived and digitalized for scholars and some others fascinated in finding out about her amazing lifestyle.


Washington’s image was spray-painted by muralist and photograph realist BK Foxx on a developing façade on the southeast corner of Atlantic Avenue and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Washington is depicted in a fur coat, jewelry, organic-seeking makeup with her hair styled beautifully, and a dignified grin on the lookout outward. The picture was taken from a 1935 situation of Apex News and Hair Magazine.


“We are a social justice corporation and our mission is to empower men and women and households,” Fran Smart, Avanzar’s director of growth, informed the Push of Atlantic City. “This mural absolutely empowers all of us.”