Margaret Walker

ne. Her first poem to appear in print, it became one of her most famous and was even anthologized in 1941 in The Negro Caravan before becoming the opening poem of her first volume of verse in 1942.

In 1936, she took on full-time work with the Federal Writers' Project in Chicago under Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Project Administration, befriending and collaborating with such noted artists as Gwendolyn Brooks, Katherine Dunham, and Frank Yerby. Perhaps the most memorable of these friendships with fellow artists was that with noted author Richard Wright, whose texts Walker would later help research and revise. In 1988, Walker would also write a book recalling that friendship, entitled Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work. Involvement in the Writers' Project offered Walker a firsthand glimpse of the struggles of her inner-city brothers and sisters who were products of the Great Migration, a movement that had resulted in hard times and broken dreams for many southern black immigrants. During this time, Walker authored an urban novel, "Goose Island," which was never published.

After completing her tenure with the WPA in 1939, Walker returned to school, entering the creative writing program at the University of Iowa, where she earned a master of arts degree in 1940 and, later, a Ph.D. in 1965. In 1941, Walker began teaching at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina; in 1942 she left for one year to teach at West Virginia State College. In that year, she also published her first volume of poems, For My People, with the title poem quickly becoming her signature piece and helping elevate her toward success. For this volume, which served as her master's thesis at Iowa, she won the Yale Younger Poets Award.

In 1943, Walker married Firnist James Alexander, or "Alex," as she loving called him, an interior designer and decorator. Following the birth of their first three children (they raised a total of four during their years of marriage), the couple moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1949. Walker began a prosperous teaching career at Jackson State College in the same year, retiring from its English department thirty years later in 1979. In 1968 she founded the Institute for the Study of History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center); she directed the center until her retirement. During her tenure at Jackson State, Walker also organized and chaired the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival. Following retirement, she remained active as professor emerita until her death in the fall of 1998.