Sara Spencer Washington’s Boardwalk Empire

By Hettie V. Williams

Sara Spencer Washington with local Leaders, Courtesy of the Atlantic City Public Library

Sara Phillips (Spencer Washington) was born June 6, 1889 in Norfolk, Virginia to Joshua and Ellen Phillips. She attended grade school in Beckley, West Virginia and Norfolk Mission College in Norfolk, Virginia eventually earning a B.S. degree in business administration from Northwestern University. She also attended Columbia University. In 1911, Sara joined the Great Migration and settled briefly in York, Pennsylvania where she studied hair care. She also completed advanced work in chemistry at Columbia University, and eventually moved to the Northside of Atlantic City in 1913 where she developed a financial empire that included beauty schools that graduated as many as 4,000 students per year, a drugstore, a recreation center, rest home, a golf course, and a 120 acre farm fifteen miles outside of the city in Galloway Township. Washington eventually came to employ more than 200 workers at her Apex News and Hair Company factory founded in 1919 that sold such products as beauty creams, cosmetics, and perfumes. These products were sold by thousands of Apex agents in a dozen U.S. states.

Madame Washington was a business woman, civil rights activist, and philanthropist. Her story is known to few. After relocating to Atlantic City in 1913, she established a one room beauty salon on the first floor of an Artic Avenue building…