Sara Spencer Washington

Sara Spencer Washington was a self-made millionaire who rose from humble roots to found an empire under the name Apex. She would become one of Atlantic city’s great philanthropists. A visionary of her time, Washington moved to Atlantic City in 1913 and opened a hair salon and school.

Struck by the lack of hair products for black women like herself, she decided to try her hand at making some. She had studied chemistry at Columbia university, a highly improbable accomplishment for a black woman of that era, which followed an equally improbable degree from Northwestern University.

In 1920, she created Apex News and Hair Company, reasoning that beauty was always a good business to be in. She was right: her Apex Beauty Colleges would go international, with forty-five thousand agents and franchises in a dozen U. S. cities and as far away as Johannesburg, South Africa.