Walker was found dead in his place of busi-
ness shortly after the publication of the third edi-
tion of his Appeal. Although long believed to have
been killed by the composite hand of the agents of
slavery, more than likely Walker died from natural
causes, perhaps a heart attack.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aptheker, Herbert. The Negro in the Abolitionist
Movement. New York: International Press, 1941.
———. “One Continual Cry”: David Walker’s Appeal
to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829–1830),
Its Sting and Its Meaning. New York: Humanities
Press, 1965.
Barksdale, Richard, and Keneth Kinnamon, eds. Black
Writers of America. New York: Macmillan Com-
pany, 1972.
Bennett, Lerone. Pioneers in Protest. Chicago: John-
son Publishing Company, 1968.
Loggins, Vernon. The Negro Author; His Development
in America to 1900. Port Washington, N.Y.: Ken-
nikat Press, 1931.
Walker, David. Appeal in Four Articles Together with
a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World
but in particular and very expressly to those in the
United States of America. Edited by Charles M.
Wiltse. New York: Hill and Wang, 1965.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Walker Alexander, Margaret Abigail
(1915–1998)
Poet, author, essayist, lecturer, and educator Mar-
garet Abigail Walker dedicated more than seven
decades of her life to writing about the black expe-
rience in America, which she chronicled in poetry
and prose, centering on such themes as time, racial
equality, love, and freedom. She was born on July
7, 1915, in Birmingham, Alabama, to Sigismund C.
Walker, a Methodist minister, and Marion Dozier
Walker, a music teacher who played ragtime. At age
14, Walker earned her high school diploma from
New Orleans Gilbert Academy, and upon comple-
tion attended New Orleans University (now Dil-
lard University) for two years. She received a B.A.
in English from Northwestern University (1935)
and worked with the Works Progress Adminis-
tration (WPA) (1936–39) before earning both
her M.A. in creative writing (1940) and her Ph.D.
(1965) from the University of Iowa. She taught
at Livingstone College (1941–42), West Virginia
State College (1942–43), and Jackson State Uni-
versity (1946–79) and was a visiting professor at
Northwestern University (1968–69). She was the
founder and director of the Institute for the Study
of History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now
the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research
Center) (1968–79) and professor emerita of Jack-
son State University (1979–98).
In Walker’s This Is My Century, she credits her
parents for inspiring her to write early in her life.
She writes, “My father was... my first teacher of
poetics.... My mother’s music, vocal and instru-
mental, gave me my only sense of rhythm” (xi–xii).
Her mother also introduced her to the poetry of
PAU L LAURENCE DUNBAR, John Greenleaf Whit-
tier, William Shakespeare, LANGSTON HUGHES, and
COUNTEE CULLEN. In 1931 she met family friend,
literary mentor, and poet Hughes, who read her
poetry, recognized her talent, suggested she strive
for musicality in verse, and encouraged her par-
ents and her teacher, Miss Fluke, to provide the
necessary climate for an aspiring writer outside
of the South. During her undergraduate work, she
met editor, scholar, and author W. E. B. DU BOIS,
who was influential in publishing her poetry in
The CRISIS magazine in 1934. Her creative writing
teacher, Edward Buell Hungerford, admitted her to
the Northwestern chapter of the Poetry Society of
America. While living in Chicago for four years,
working as a social worker and later as a member
of the WPA, Walker honed her craft. In Chicago she
was a member of the South Side Writer’s Group,
initiated by RICHARD WRIGHT, between 1936 and
1939; she associated with such artists and schol-
ars as Nelson Algren, FRANK YERBY, GWENDOLYN
BROOKS, ARNA BONTEMPS, Frank Marshall Davis,
Katherine Dunham, Margaret Taylor Goss Bur-
roughs, and Theodore Ward. Of these artists and
scholars, her most valuable literary experience was
with Wright, who broadened her vision of how lit-
erature, in particular, could be a vital part of po-
litical action, but her friendship and mentorship528 Walker Alexander, Margaret Abigail