known now as Dillard University. After two years
there, she transferred to NORTHWESTERNUNIVER-
SITYand earned her B.A. in English in 1935. She
later earned an M.A. in creative writing from the
University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in 1965.
Walker’s immersion in the Harlem Renais-
sance culture began in the mid-1930s. She joined
the Federal Writers’ Project efforts in Chicago in
1936 and until 1939 worked alongside writers such
as Gwendolyn Brooks and Frank Yerby. In Chicago
she also was an active participant in the South Side
Writers Group and through it became a close friend
and colleague of RICHARDWRIGHT.
Margaret Walker’s literary career began in the
final years of the Harlem Renaissance. She published
her powerful and frequently cited poem “For My
People” in Poetrymagazine in 1937. The poem, in-
cluded in the influential collection The Negro Cara-
van(1941), became the title piece of For My People
(1942), Walker’s first collection of poems. For My
Peoplewas awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award. In
1944 Walker won a JULIUSROSENWALDFELLOW-
SHIP. In later years she also was the recipient of other
prestigious awards and fellowships including Ford,
Fulbright, and National Endowment for the Human-
ities fellowships.
Walker’s later works and accomplishments in-
clude the publication of Jubilee(1966) and the for-
mation of the Institute for the Study of History,
Life and Culture of Black People at Jackson State
College. The center has been renamed in honor of
Walker and is known now as the Margaret Walker
Alexander National Research Center.
Bibliography
Graham, Maryemma, ed. Conversations with Margaret
Walker.Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
———. Fields Watered with Blood: Critical Essays on Mar-
garet Walker.Athens: University of Georgia Press,
2001.
———. How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and
Literature.New York: Feminist Press at the City
University of New York, 1990.
Walker, Margaret. For My People.1942, reprint, Salem,
N.H.: Ayer, 1987.
Walls of Jericho, The Rudolph Fisher(1928)
The first novel by RUDOLPHFISHER, a pioneering
medical researcher and prolific writer credited with
publishing one of the earliest non-serialized
African-American detective novels. Critics differ
in their opinions about whether the novel presents
a sophisticated satire of HARLEM life and the
archetypes of 1920s society or whether it mocks
the stock figures who explore the African-Ameri-
can community and aspire to support the creative
aspirations of its artists.
The firm of ALFREDA. KNOPFpublished the
work and, on the frontispiece of Fisher’s volume,
noted that it was part of a series entitled “The
Negro in Unusual Fiction.” That list included THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ANEX-COLOUREDMANby
JAMESWELDONJOHNSON, NIGGERHEAVEN by
CARLVANVECHTEN, THEFIRE IN THEFLINTand
FLIGHTby WALTERWHITE, and Latterday Sym-
phonyby Romer Wilson.
Fisher’s title, The Walls of Jericho,evokes the
Old Testament reference to the supposedly impen-
etrable walls around the city of Jericho that come
tumbling down when Joshua and his men circle
the walls seven times while sounding their musical
horns insistently. Fisher included two lines from a
spiritual on Joshua on the title page of the book.
The novel itself evokes the besieged city of Jericho.
It is set in modern-day Harlem, whose days of glory
have long passed. The protagonist of the novel is a
20th-century Joshua, a hardworking piano and fur-
niture mover named Joshua Jones who is also
known as “Shine.” Jones loves Linda Young, a maid
employed by Agatha Cramp, a conservative, racist
white philanthropist. The two sweethearts experi-
ence wholly different aspects and realities of New
York City because of their jobs. Linda’s employer is
a spinster and inadvertently becomes attracted to
Fred Merritt, a successful, light-skinned attorney.
Not aware that Merritt could be anything other
than a white man, Cramp invites him to call upon
her after the two meet at the annual ball hosted by
the General Improvement Association, an African-
American society. The matter becomes even more
complicated by the fact that Merritt has just pur-
chased a home in the elite neighborhood in which
Agatha Cramp resides.
The plot intensifies as residential and domes-
tic politics embroil the characters increasingly
volatile circumstances. Merritt hires Linda as a
maid in his home. Much to her sweetheart’s dis-
may, she is almost raped. Merritt’s home is set
ablaze, and Merritt suspects his white neighbors548 Walls of Jericho, The