Margaret Walker
(1915–1998)

From an early age, poet and author Margaret Walker exhibited a talent and passion for writing. Walker's parents, Sigismund, a Methodist minister, and Marion, a musician, encouraged Margaret's interest in literature. When she was a girl, her mother read her works by poets such as Paul Laurence Dunbar, and played her music that helped shape Walker's developing poetic sense. From her grandmother, Margaret heard stories of her great-grandmother's experiences as a slave in Georgia. These spoken tales made a deep impression on the young girl and would later provide the basis for Walker's acclaimed novel, Jubilee (1965).

Given active encouragement from her parents, Walker immersed herself in the poetry of African American writers of the 1920s, such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Hughes became a direct influence when Walker met him at a lecture in 1932. Recognizing her early promise, he encouraged her to continue writing. Shortly after, in 1934, her first poem was published in Crisis, the national magazine of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Walker was just 19 years old at the time, and already a senior at Northwestern University.

During the Depression years of the 1930s, Walker managed to secure a position with the WPA (Works Progress Administration), a federal jobs program that paid authors to write. Surrounded by other leading writers, Walker's years with the WPA were very formative for the young author. She developed a close relationship with author Richard Wright and even helped him conduct some research for his landmark novel Native Son. Walker would later write about their relationship in her book Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius (1987).

While working for the WPA on an Illinois guidebook, Walker continued to write poetry. Her first book of poems, For My People, was published in 1942 and quickly went into multiple printings. The uplifting title poem was particularly popular. For My People showed an acute interest in the struggle for civil rights and an awareness of an often painful past. These same concerns were also prominent in Walker's later poetry and writings, in which she combined biblical references and stories told by her grandmother to form a highly potent mix. Walker's novel Jubilee was praised, for example, for the way it brought her grandmother's old tales to life and celebrated African American contributions to Southern culture..

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