The archival trail of Black philanthropy is long and well-documented for scholars researching Black business history. Although the documents reveal a record of giving to various causes and organizations, it can be challenging to explain the significance of that evidence. In Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy During Jim Crow, Tyrone Freeman provides an instructive framework for how we might interpret and incorporate Black people’s tradition of giving in the broader conversation on American philanthropy. The wealthiest Black philanthropists are usually not considered alongside their white counterparts. Nevertheless, Freeman challenges us to reconsider what it means to give, in ways financial or otherwise. The author uses wills, letters, speeches, newspapers, and business records to redefine, interrogate, and expand American philanthropy in broader terms. “Madam C. J. Walker,” writes Freeman, “was not simply a charitable entrepreneur, but rather a great African American philanthropist who practiced a distinctive racialized and gendered approach to giving that simultaneously relieved immediately felt needs in her community and thwarted the systematic oppression of the Jim Crow regime—thus making her a historical progenitor of today’s Black philanthropy” (7). In this way, Walker and her gospel of giving actually represented American philanthropy in its truest sense, more so than the people we typically hold up as examplars, because her philanthropy did not begin and end with her wealth.

In six chapters, the book expands Walker’s legacy beyond her lifetime (1867-1919) to include an additional forty to fifty years after her death. A growing body of scholarship now exists on Walker’s innovative efforts in legitimizing the Black beauty culture industry. In previous writings, however, her philanthropy is presented as a matter of course with a few familiar examples that highlight her giving interests in the ways we expect from businesspeople. While Freeman’s philanthropic biography provides a chronology and thematic focus similar to other books about Walker, he explains very clearly that Walker’s gospel of giving philosophy was as much defined by her identity as it was by her business acumen. Chapter One explains that Walker’s identity as a Black southern migrant, washerwoman, churchwoman, and clubwoman became a central part of the “making of Madam C. J. Walker.” The origins of Walker’s giving habits were formed, encouraged, and nurtured through the institutions and organizations that gave her a hand up when she needed it most. This became most evident when she settled in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1889. The institutional and organizational networks that she embraced became a basis for her training in the importance of giving and what it meant to give at every stage of life. Sarah Breedlove intensified her Christian walk through the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. She joined the church’s women’s auxiliary, the Mite Missionary Society, where she received mentorship from a contingent of Black women, including fellow churchgoer Jesse Batts Robinson, who became her friend and later an employee at the Walker Company. Walker’s “moral imagination,” an idea that deserves more explanation throughout the book, emerged whereby she came to have a spiritual and personal connection to the causes she later prioritized through her giving.

Scholars writing about Black business history have well understood the duality—the inherent responsibility to community, in addition to profit-seeking—in what it has meant historically to be a Black businessperson in the United States. Chapter Two describes that duality as a deep sense of philanthropy, which meant more than fulfilling an obligation to maintain one’s customer base. Walker’s main form of giving could be seen through the employment opportunities she gave to Black women, in particular, so they could become Walker agents. Here, we also learn about the importance of Freeman B. Ransom in bringing Walker’s gospel of giving philanthropy and moral imagination to life. He served the Walker Company as its attorney and as Walker’s financial advisor for her philanthropic activities. “Madam Walker’s moral imagination gave the company this philanthropic character, and Freeman B. Ransom, at her direction, operationalized it on a daily basis and at a national scale” (69). Walker especially directed her philanthropy toward Black women, as Freeman later explains, because “she funded the race to uplift Black women, and she funded Black women in order to uplift the race” (157). Chapter Three explains Walker’s charitable giving to Black educational institutions and her vision to start an industrial school in South Africa. The support for educational institutions was crucial to understanding Walker’s gospel of giving, as she brought a multilayered strategy to her philanthropy through these institutions. She successfully proposed to establish a curriculum for teaching the Walker Method, which provided students with credentials to become beauty culturalists, at various Black industrial schools in the South. In addition to Walker’s educational activism, Chapter Four outlines her charitable giving to civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its antilynching campaign. Walker’s giving not only supported organizations such as the NAACP, but also more radical organizations such as the International League of Darker Peoples, an organization that expanded her Pan-African consciousness.

Chapter Five makes sense of Walker’s giving by describing her categories of philanthropy. “Her giving,” Freeman explains, “took form through multiple channels that included monetary gifts, nonmonetary support, employment, and institution building” (163). The author skillfully teases out and expounds on Walker’s philanthropy through particular and familiar primary sources. A three-page letter written by Ransom in 1914 in response to a request for a list of Walker’s philanthropic activities proved especially useful. “The letter,” Freeman writes, “provides an important record of Walker’s donations, but it also bears witness to Walker’s understanding of her community’s needs, her responsibilities to others, and the most feasible methods for her to meet such needs and obligations” (144). Moreover, he makes clear that Black philanthropic history not only considered the needs of strangers but those of family and friends as well. Chapter Six brings Walker’s legacy full-circle with another revealing document: Walker’s last will and testament. Freeman outlines virtually every detail of where she gave and to whom in exacting amounts, and explains how those gifts aligned with Walker’s gospel of giving. In particular, Freeman outlines Walker’s detailed instructions when it came to how she wanted her wealth divided and also points to how Walker intentionally used her last will and testament to shape her own legacy. This further demonstrates how wills written by women often served to sketch out their legacies in narrative form. “Walker left a blueprint for her legacy,” Freeman concludes, “that perpetuated her gospel of giving. Her testamentary documents revealed that her memento mori moments enhanced her generosity and led to greater provisions of gifts to individuals and institutions in service to the race” (182).

Madam C. J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving compels us to reflect on the impact of Black entrepreneurs beyond using their examples to demonstrate their economic success against the odds. Instead, this book shows how Walker’s success ensured that the Black community would be taken care of in a multiplicity of ways beyond her financial capabilities. The book is a significant contribution to Black philanthropic history, Black women’s history, American philanthropic history, African American history, and Black business history that will influence practitioners, scholars, students, and people interested in understanding their own giving practices and relevance to the broader society.