Margaret Walker
{{Short description|American poet and writer}}
{{other people}}
{{Infobox writer
| name = Margaret Walker
| image = Margaret Alexander (13270304753).jpg
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| birth_date = {{Birth date|1915|07|07}}
| birth_place = Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1998|11|30|1915|07|07}}
| death_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
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| occupation = Poet, novelist
| nationality = American
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| notableworks = For My People (1942)
Jubilee (1966)
| spouse = Firnist Alexander
| partner =
| children = 4
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}}
Margaret Walker (Margaret Abigail Walker Alexander by marriage; July 7, 1915 – November 30, 1998) was an American poet and writer. She was part of the African-American literary movement in Chicago, known as the Chicago Black Renaissance. Her notable works include For My People (1942) which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, and the novel Jubilee (1966), set in the South during the American Civil War.
Biography
Walker was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Sigismund C. Walker, a teacher, and Marion (née Dozier) Walker, who helped their daughter by teaching her philosophy and poetry as a child. She was captivated by the bedtime stories her grandmother told her, which were often tales of slavery.{{Cite book |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/book31250 |title=Fields Watered with Blood: Critical Essays on Margaret Walker |date=2014 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |doi=10.1353/book31250 |isbn=978-0-8203-4698-4 |editor-last=Graham |editor-first=Maryemma}} She knew at a young age that she wanted to become a writer so that she could write books about people of colour that would not make her feel ashamed. Her family moved to New Orleans when Walker was a young girl. At the age of 15, she showed a few of her poems to Langston Hughes, on a speaking tour at the moment, who recognised her talent.Hughes, Langston (1956). "I Wonder as I Wander", pp. 80 - 81 She attended school there, including several years of college at what is now Dillard University, before she moved north to Chicago. With the help of her English professor, E. B. Hungerford, who was also her mentor, Walker learned all the different forms of English poetry, the English metrical system, scansion of a poem, and memorised versification patterns.
In 1935, Walker received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern University. In 1936 she began work with the Federal Writers' Project under the Works Progress Administration of the President Franklin D. Roosevelt administration during the Great Depression. She worked alongside other young writers like Gwendolyn Brooks and Frank Yerby. Her supervisor, Jacob Scher, was so impressed with her talent that he allowed her to work from home on her own material, a privilege accorded no other member of the Illinois staff.{{Cite book |last=Mangione |first=Jerre |title=The Deal and the Dream: The Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943 |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |year=1972 |isbn=0-316-54500-7 |pages=124}} She was a member of the South Side Writers Group, which included authors such as Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Fenton Johnson, Theodore Ward, and Frank Marshall Davis.Knupfer, Anne Meis (2006). The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women's Activism. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
In 1942, she received her master's degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa. In 1965, she returned to that school to earn her Ph.D.
Walker married Firnist Alexander in 1943 and moved to Mississippi to be with him. They had four children together and lived in the Medgar Evers Historic District (formerly Elraine Subdivision) in the capital of Jackson.{{cite web |author= |date=September 18, 2013 |title=National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Evers, Medgar, Historic District |url={{NRHP url|id=13000737}} |accessdate=January 23, 2023 |publisher=National Park Service}} With {{NRHP url|id=13000737|photos=y|title=accompanying pictures}}
Academic career
Walker became a literature professor at what is today Jackson State University, an historically black college, where she taught from 1949 to 1979. In 1968, Walker founded the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now the Margaret Walker Center){{cite web|url=http://www.jsums.edu/margaretwalkercenter|title=Margaret Walker Center|work=Jackson State University|date=2017|access-date=April 12, 2018}} and her personal papers are now stored there. In 1976, she went on to serve as the institute's director.
Literary writing
In 1942, Walker's poetry collection For My People won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition under the judgeship of editor Stephen Vincent Benét, making her the first black woman to receive a national writing prize.{{cite web|url=http://www.clarionledger.com/story/life/2014/11/01/book-review-margaret-walker-biography-insightful/18327903/|title=Book review: Margaret Walker biography insightful|author=Robert Luckett|work=The Clarion-Ledger|date=November 1, 2014}}Bradley, George. "Introduction", The Yale Younger Poets Anthology, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 24. Her For My People was considered the "most important collection of poetry written by a participant in the Chicago Black Renaissance before Gwendolyn Brooks's A Street in Bronzeville."Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley C. Harrold, The African-American Odyssey, Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2011, p. 522. {{ISBN|0-205-72883-9}}. Richard Barksdale says: "The [title] poem was written when "world-wide pain, sorrow, and affliction were tangibly evident, and few could isolate the black man's dilemma from humanity's dilemma during the depression years or during the war years." He said that the power of resilience presented in the poem is a hope Walker holds out not only to black people but to all people, to "all the Adams and Eves."{{cite book|last=Barksdale|first=Richard K.|title=Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays|year=1973|publisher=Prentice Hall}}
Walker's second published book (and only novel), Jubilee (1966), is the story of a slave family during and after the Civil War, and is based on her great-grandmother's life. It took her thirty years to write. Roger Whitlow says: "It serves especially well as a response to white 'nostalgia' fiction about the antebellum and Reconstruction South."{{cite book|last=Whitlow|first=Roger|title=Black American Literature: A Critical History|year=1974|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers|isbn=978-0822602781}}
This book is considered important in African-American literature. Walker was the first of a generation of women who started publishing more novels in the 1970s.
In 1975, Walker released three albums of poetry on Folkways Records – Margaret Walker Alexander Reads Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar and James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes; Margaret Walker Reads Margaret Walker and Langston Hughes; and The Poetry of Margaret Walker.{{cite web|url=http://www.folkways.si.edu/the-poetry-of-margaret-walker/african-american-spoken/album/smithsonian|title=Smithsonian Folkways: The Poetry of Margaret Walker}}{{cite web|url=http://www.folkways.si.edu/margaret-walker-alexander-reads-langston-hughes-pl-dunbar-jw-johnson/african-american-spoken-poetry/album/smithsonian|title=Smithsonian Folkways - Margaret Walker Alexander Reads Langston Hughes, P. L. Dunbar, J. W. Johnson}}{{cite web|url=http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=28202|title=Smithsonian Folkways}}
Walker received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1989.{{cite web |website=National Coalition of 100 Black Women |title=Candace Award Recipients 1982–1990, Page 1 |url=http://www.ncbw.org/programs/award1.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030314021634/http://www.ncbw.org/programs/award1.html |archive-date=March 14, 2003 }}
Court cases
In 1978, Margaret Walker sued Alex Haley, claiming that his 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family had violated Jubilee
In 1991, Walker was sued by Ellen Wright, the widow of Richard Wright, on the grounds that Walker's use of unpublished letters and an unpublished journal in a just-published biography of Wright violated the widow's copyright. Wright v. Warner Books was dismissed by the district court, and this judgment was supported by the appeals court.{{cite web |url=http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/953/731/222890/
|title=953 F.2d 731: Ellen Wright, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Warner Books, Inc. and Margaret Walker, Also Known Asmargaret Walker Alexander, Defendants-appellees
|publisher=United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
|date=November 21, 1991
|last=Meskill
|access-date=June 27, 2012}}
Death and legacy
Walker died of breast cancer in Chicago, Illinois, in 1998, aged 83.
Walker was inducted into The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2014.{{cite web|url=https://chicagoliteraryhof.org/inductees/profile/margaret-walker|title=Margaret Walker|publisher=Chicago Literary Hall of Fame|date=2014}}
Walker was honoured with a historical marker through the Mississippi Writers Trail.{{Cite web|title=Mississippi Writers Trail marker honours Margaret Walker|url=https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2019/07/09/mississippi-writers-trail-marker-honors-margaret-walker/1686585001/|access-date=June 16, 2020|website=The Clarion Ledger|language=en}}
Works
- {{cite book| title=For My People| publisher=Ayer| year=1942 | isbn= 978-0-405-01902-9 }} (reprint 1968)
- {{Cite book|title=Prophets for a New Day|publisher=Broadside Press|year=1970|isbn=9780910296212}}
- {{cite book| title=October Journey| publisher=Broadside Press| year= 1973| isbn= 978-0-910296-96-0 }}
- {{Cite book|title=A Poetic Equation: Conversations Between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker|publisher=Howard University Press|year=1974|isbn=9780882580036}}
- {{Cite book|title=Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work|publisher=Warner Books|year=1988|isbn=9781567430042}}
- {{cite book|title=This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems|publisher=University of Georgia Press|year=1989|isbn=978-0-8203-1135-7}}
- {{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M3-mCptVYe4C&q=Margaret+Walker|title=How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature|editor=Graham|editor-first=Maryemma|publisher=Feminist Press|year=1990|isbn=978-1-55861-004-0}}
- {{Cite book|title=On Being Female, Black, and Free: Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932-1992|publisher=University of Tennessee Press|year=1997|isbn=9780870499807|editor-last=Graham|editor-first=Maryemma}}
- {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tDbMOrEOdwMC&q=Margaret+Walker| title=Jubilee| publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt| year= 1999| isbn= 978-0-395-92495-2 }}
- {{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yy5SecXW988C&q=Margaret+Walker| title=Conversations with Margaret Walker| editor=Graham| publisher=University Press of Mississippi| year= 2002| isbn= 978-1-57806-512-7 |editor-first=Maryemma}}
Papers
- Galley sheets for Jubilee and original pre-corrected copy of A Poetic Equation at Millsaps-Wilson Library, Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi
- Margaret Walker Alexander Room and Collection, Jackson State University{{Citation|editor-last=Harris|editor-first=Trudier|title= Afro-American Writers, 1940–1955|series=Dictionary of Literary Biography|volume=76|page=181|year=1988|place=Detroit|publisher=Gale Research Co.|isbn=0810345544}}
Film biography
- [http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0035&s=For%20My%20People For My People, The Life and Writing of Margaret Walker], distributed by California Newsreel.
Poetry and music
Margaret Walker's evocative poetry has inspired new musical compositions by 20th and 21st-century composers. Inspired works include Randy Klein's 2011 For My People — The Margaret Walker Song Cycle, a song cycle for choir (formerly entitled Lineage),{{cite web |last1=University |first1=Jackson State |title=Composer and pianist Randy Klein will bring For My People: The Margaret Walker Song Cycle to JSU for Birthday Celebration. {{!}} Jackson State Newsroom |url=http://www.jsumsnews.com/?p=3342 |date=July 6, 2012 |access-date=May 21, 2022 |archive-date=November 17, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221117145633/http://www.jsumsnews.com/?p=3342 |url-status=dead }}{{cite web |last1=Drozdowski |first1=Ted |title=Randy Klein Writes His Way, One Genre at a Time |url=https://www.bmi.com/news/entry/randy_klein_writes_his_way_one_genre_at_a_time |website=BMI.com |language=en |date=21 September 2011}} and Edward W. Hardy's 2022 BORN FREE, a song cycle for soprano, violin and piano.{{cite web |last1=Cristi |first1=A. A. |title=Wolf Trap Opera Announces World Premiere Of Edward W. Hardy's BORN FREE |url=https://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/Wolf-Trap-Opera-Announces-World-Premiere-Of-Edward-W-Hardys-BORN-FREE-20220520 |website=BroadwayWorld.com |language=en |date=May 20, 2022}}
Further reading
References
{{Reflist |30em|refs=
|url=http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/walker/biography.php
|title=Biography - Margaret Abigail Walker
|work=Ibiblio
|access-date=June 27, 2012}}
|url=http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/walker-margaret.html
|publisher=University of Pennsylvania archives
|title=Margaret Walker, poet and novelist (obituary, December 1998)
|author=Maida Odom
|access-date=June 27, 2012}}
}}
External links
- {{cite web | url=http://www.thenation.com/article/margaret-walker-alexander | title=Margaret Walker Alexander | work=The Nation | date=January 4, 1999 | access-date=May 7, 2013 | author=Amiri Baraka | author-link=Amiri Baraka }}
- [https://folkways.si.edu/search?query=Margaret+Walker Margaret Walker] at Smithsonian Folkways
- [http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/walker/bibliography.htm "Margaret Walker: Select Bibliography"], Modern American Poetry.
- [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/margaret-walker Margaret Walker] at the Poetry Foundation
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Walker, Margaret}}
Category:African-American novelists
Category:African-American poets
Category:American women novelists
Category:Federal Writers' Project people
Category:Yale Younger Poets winners
Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni
Category:Jackson State University faculty
Category:Northwestern University alumni
Category:University of Iowa alumni
Category:Deaths from breast cancer in Illinois
Category:Writers from Birmingham, Alabama
Category:20th-century African-American writers
Category:20th-century American novelists
Category:20th-century American poets
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:Novelists from Illinois
Category:Novelists from Mississippi