Margaret Walker

Lore & Background

Margaret Walker was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to Sigismund C. Walker, a teacher, and Marion (née Dozier) Walker, who taught her philosophy and poetry as a child. She was captivated by her grandmother's bedtime stories about slavery. Her family moved to New Orleans when she was young. At age 15, she showed poems to Langston Hughes, who recognized her talent. She attended college at what is now Dillard University before moving north to Chicago. With mentor E. B. Hungerford, she learned English poetry forms and versification. In 1935, she received a Bachelor of Arts from Northwestern University. In 1936, she began work with the Federal Writers' Project under the Works Progress Administration, alongside writers like Gwendolyn Brooks and Frank Yerby. Her supervisor Jacob Scher allowed her to work from home on her own material. She was a member of the South Side Writers Group, which included Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, and others. In 1942, she received a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa, and in 1965 she returned there for a Ph.D. She married Firnist Alexander in 1943 and moved to Mississippi, raising four children in the Medgar Evers Historic District in Jackson.

Reader's Guide

Margaret Walker's significance lies in her role as a key figure in the Chicago Black Renaissance and her pioneering achievements in African-American literature. Her poetry collection For My People (1942) won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, making her the first black woman to receive a national writing prize. The title poem was noted for addressing universal human suffering while emphasizing black resilience. It is considered important in African-American literature, and Walker was among the first of a generation of women who published more novels in the 1970s. She taught at what is today Jackson State University from 1949 to 1979, and in 1968 founded the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now the Margaret Walker Center). She was inducted into The Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2014 and honored with a historical marker through the Mississippi Writers Trail. Her papers are stored at Jackson State University.

Did You Know?

• Walker was the first black woman to win a national writing prize, the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, for For My People in 1942.
• In 1936, she worked for the Federal Writers' Project under the Works Progress Administration, where her supervisor allowed her to work from home on her own material—a privilege no other Illinois staff member received.
• Walker founded the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now the Margaret Walker Center) at Jackson State University in 1968.