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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.

I’m a Black woman in 2026 watching lawmakers and managers still debate whether my hair and my clothes are “professional.” And all I can think about is Ann Lowe. The first nationally recognized Black American couturier. The woman behind gowns for Rockefellers, Roosevelts, du Ponts, and Hollywood stars. The designer who stitched her way into history while the world refused to say her name. Jacqueline Bouvier walks down the aisle to marry John F. Kennedy in an ivory silk taffeta gown. Fifty yards of fabric. Intricate tucking. A portrait neckline. Dimensional detailing only one woman was doing at that level. That woman was Ann Lowe. Welcome to day 22 of deleted history… Ten days before the wedding, a pipe burst in Ann’s studio and she still finished everything on time. She lost money on the job. And she never told the family there was a crisis. The result? One of the most photographed wedding dresses in American history. The press raved about the gown. When asked who designed it, Jackie called her “a colored woman.” No name. No credit. Just couture excellence, erased in real time. Ann studied in segregated design schools, forced to learn alone in a separate room. Her work was so good they used her designs as models for the white students who wouldn’t sit with her. They wouldn’t share a classroom. But they studied her work. Tell me that doesn’t sound familiar. We’re still in group chats the night before orientation asking: ➤ Is this twist‑out “too big” for the office? ➤ Are these braids “too much” for the boardroom? ➤ Do I need to tone down my nails so they think I’m serious? Meanwhile: ➤ Our hair needs a whole civil rights act just to be left alone. ➤ Our style gets labeled “unprofessional” at work and “inspiration” on the runway. ➤ Our aesthetics keep entire industries paid while we debate if we’re allowed to wear them to the interview. Ann Lowe’s work is in museums now. There are full exhibitions dedicated to her gowns. They tried to keep her in the shadows.

I’m watching the Trump administration tell nurses they’re not “professional” anymore. And all I can think about is Mary Eliza Mahoney. Not a policymaker. Not a lobbyist. A Black woman born in 1845 who decided she was a professional long before the government had language for it. Her story didn’t start with a white coat. She got a job at the New England Hospital for Women and Children. Not as “Nurse Mahoney.” As a janitor. A cook. A washerwoman. A nurse’s aide. For more than 15 years, she worked behind the scenes of a system that did not see her as equal. Most people would’ve called it “entry level.” Mary treated it like a paid residency. She watched how the hospital ran. She studied patient care. She learned the rhythms of birth, illness, and recovery from every angle. Then she made a move. She applied to the hospital’s 16-month nursing program. Dozens started. Only a small group finished. Mary Eliza Mahoney graduated in 1879. She became the first Black woman in the United States to complete formal nurse training and earn a professional nursing license. No shortcuts. No “influencer” title. Just work, rigor, and standards. And after all that? Public hospitals still didn’t want her as an equal. So she made another decision: She focused on private-duty nursing. She built a premium practice serving mostly white, wealthy families. She became known for efficiency, discretion, and extraordinary bedside manner. Families requested her by name. No algorithm pushed her content. Her name was the algorithm. And she still didn’t stop with herself. In 1908, she helped co-found the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses. She took private success and turned it into public infrastructure. Now put that next to 2026. Nursing gets moved off the “professional degree” list. Loan caps tighten. Graduate programs get harder to afford. A woman-dominated field—especially filled by women of color—gets quietly downgraded on paper. They say, “It’s not a value judgment.”

What’s one area of your business you’re simplifying?