Biography
Margaret Walker
Who Was Margaret Walker?
Margaret Walker, 1940
Margaret Abigail Walker was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1915. When she was a young girl, her family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where she attended the Gilbert Academy, a private, college-preparatory school for African Americans. While at Gilbert, she met poet Langston Hughes, who encouraged her interest in literature.
Walker later moved to Chicago and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Northwestern University in 1935. One year later, she became an active member of the South Side Writers’ Group alongside notables like Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, and Fenton Johnson. She also worked for the Federal Writers’ Project with Gwendolyn Brooks and Frank Yerby.
In 1943, while teaching at Livingstone College in North Carolina, Walker married Firnist Alexander. By 1949, Walker and her husband had relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, so Walker could teach at Jackson State University. Walker taught at Jackson State for 30 years while raising a family with four children.
Teaching at Jackson State University
Margaret Walker with Black Studies posters
In 1949, Margaret Walker began a 30-year teaching and writing career at Jackson College for Negro Teachers (now Jackson State University). She focused on language education, writing instruction, and African American literature. Walker wrote a novel and two poetry collections during her tenure, while also serving as director of the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People, a Jackson State program she founded.
Featured Video
Margaret Walker’s Tribute to Her People
In 1942, Margaret Walker published her most acclaimed poetry collection, For My People. The title poem became a literary anthem to people of African descent and a celebration of their cultural expressions. This video explores Walker’s impact as a writer and includes footage of her reciting For My People.
Publishing Jubilee
Margaret Walker signing Jubilee, 1966
While raising four children and teaching at Jackson State, Margaret Walker completed a PhD in English Literature from the University of Iowa. Her dissertation was Jubilee, a historical novel that had taken her at least 20 years to complete.
Jubilee (1966) is set in the South before, during, and after the Civil War and dramatizes the life of her grand- and great-grandmothers. Although these women are enslaved, Walker depicts the ways in which they struggle and sometimes triumph over the trials and tribulations of their daily-lived experiences. As biographical fiction, Jubilee paved the way for other African American women to begin writing historical novels.
Advancing Black Studies
After obtaining her PhD, Margaret Walker resumed work at Jackson State and founded the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People in 1968. Her leadership helped launch the broader Black Studies movement, an effort to decenter the Eurocentric approach to education and institutionalize the study of African American life in academic settings. Black Studies programs presented lesser-known historical and contemporary stories and sought to equip students to become agents of change. In 1969, Walker became the director of the Black Studies Institute at Jackson State, which now bears her name.
Growing polarization of the races in America only serves to increase tensions and anxieties in our search for remedies, panaceas, and reasonable alternatives to violence, chaos, and anarchy. The Black Studies Programs are a creative response to violence and racism. At Jackson State College, we envision these Black Studies Programs as avenues to understanding and thus to racial good will and cultural appreciation.
Margaret Walker, personal journal entry, 1970
The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University
Document from the Margaret Walker Center archives
Margaret Walker Center archivist, Angela Stewart
Today, the Margaret Walker Center is a museum and archive that houses artifacts about the university, its faculty and community, and Walker herself. The museum is home to a variety of objects, like the school’s historic marker, Walker’s typewriter, and her Alabama Writers Hall of Fame medal. The archive includes Walker’s papers, such as correspondence from other prominent writers, including June Jordan, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright.
Also integral to the archive are first editions of Walker’s publications and an extensive collection of her personal journals that span at least six decades. The Center preserves all these materials and makes them available to students and other researchers. It also sponsors public programs featuring guest writers and social activists.
Honoring Black Women Writers
Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival participants at the Jackson State University Botanical Garden
Margaret Walker sought to create greater appreciation for African American women’s writings.
In 1973 Walker hosted the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival, bringing together many nationally recognized poets, including Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Audre Lorde. The conference goal was to assess and celebrate the African American literary landscape since the era of the acclaimed, enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley Peters (1753–1784).
A 50-year-anniversary reconvening that featured several original participants was held at Jackson State in November of 2023.
Margaret Walker’s Legacy
Margaret Walker at her desk
Singing Their Songs. Elizabeth Catlett, 1992.
Margaret Walker retired from Jackson State in 1979, but continued her research, writing, and publishing efforts. She published Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius in 1988 and This is My Century: New and Collected Poems, her final poetry collection, in 1989.
Margaret Walker Alexander died in 1998 at age 83. Her legacy of literary excellence continues to inspire writers, scholars, and educators in the African American community and beyond.
I am not . . . writing about the underground man, the victim, the dangling man, Kerzog, the unfortunate creature who is a pawn in the universe, hopeless, helpless, and desperate with nothing before him but pain, despair, and death. I believe that the writer must lift up the human heart with hope—believe that the human spirit is universal and that good must inevitably win and triumph over evil.
Margaret Walker, personal journal entry, 1977
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