40 Fun Facts About Margaret Walker

Which 1970s blockbuster did Margaret Walker claim in court had borrowed from her novel Jubilee?

Roots was the target: Walker sued Alex Haley in 1977, but the court found no actionable similarities and dismissed her case.

Margaret Walker's Jubilee is often read as a Black answer to which hugely popular Civil War novel?

Gone with the Wind made the Old South glamorous in 1936; Jubilee retells the same era through the eyes of an enslaved woman, Vyry.

Vyry, the enslaved heroine of Margaret Walker's Jubilee, is based on which of Walker's relatives?

Her great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown, lived through slavery and the Civil War. Walker first heard the stories at bedtime as a child.

Which Harlem Renaissance poet urged teenage Margaret Walker's parents to send her north for college?

Langston Hughes was on a speaking tour when the teenager showed him her poems, and he told her family she should study outside the South.

In Margaret Walker's Jubilee, which group burns down the home Vyry's family builds in Troy, Alabama?

The Ku Klux Klan torches the house, forcing the family onward again before they finally settle near Greenville.

Which civil rights leader, Margaret Walker's Mississippi neighbor, did she honor as Micah in a poem?

Medgar Evers lived on her street in the state capital, and the road the two families shared now carries Walker's name.

Which 1930s friend did Margaret Walker later profile in her biography Daemonic Genius?

Richard Wright leaned on her research help while writing Native Son. Her 1988 biography of him survived a copyright suit from his widow.

For My People made Margaret Walker the first Black winner of which university's Younger Poets prize?

Yale University Press published the collection in 1942, and its title poem remains her best-known and most-recited work.

Margaret Walker's 1973 poetry festival marked 200 years since which colonial-era poet's first book?

Phillis Wheatley published Poems on Various Subjects in 1773. The festival drew Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Sonia Sanchez and others to Mississippi.

Fresh out of college in 1936, Margaret Walker spent three years with which New Deal program?

The Federal Writers' Project put her beside other young talents, and one supervisor was so impressed that he let her work from home on her own material.

At which historically Black Mississippi university did Margaret Walker teach from 1949 to 1979?

Jackson State kept her for thirty years, and the institute she founded there in 1968 now bears her name.

Margaret Walker was born in 1915 in which Alabama city, where she spent her first ten years?

Birmingham's schools left a mark: Walker later named the dedicated Black women who taught her there as early inspirations.

To which Southern port city did Margaret Walker's family move in 1925, when she was ten?

New Orleans is where she finished high school at fourteen and spent two years at the college where both her parents taught.

Margaret Walker graduated in 1935 from which Midwestern university, her father's alma mater?

Northwestern gave her a BA in English in 1935, though she later recalled that only one restaurant would serve her as a student there.

Margaret Walker earned two graduate degrees, over twenty years apart, at which state's university?

The University of Iowa is home to the celebrated Writers' Workshop, where she arrived in 1939 after her New Deal job ended.

Before its 1966 publication, Margaret Walker's novel Jubilee served as which piece of academic work?

Her doctoral dissertation was finished in 1965 and published as a novel a year later; it has stayed in print ever since.

In which state does Vyry grow up enslaved on the Dutton estate in Margaret Walker's Jubilee?

Georgia is where the real woman behind Vyry was born, in Terrell County; Walker visited the area in 1947 while researching the book.

In Margaret Walker's Jubilee, which man is the father who never acknowledges Vyry as his daughter?

The plantation's master, John Dutton, promises to free Vyry in his will but never does, so she stays enslaved until the war's end.

In Margaret Walker's Jubilee, Vyry's free-born first husband, Randall Ware, works in which trade?

Blacksmith Randall Ware is free but cannot buy Vyry's freedom; when war comes he joins the Union troops and the couple are separated.

Composer Ulysses Kay turned Margaret Walker's Jubilee into which kind of musical work in 1976?

An opera in three acts with a libretto by Donald Dorr, it was commissioned by the company Opera/South.

Margaret Walker's 1974 book A Poetic Equation records her talks with which younger Black poet?

Nikki Giovanni was born the year Walker married; their book shows a shared concern for justice bridging two generations of poets.

Margaret Walker joined the South Side Writers Group in the 1930s Black Renaissance of which city?

Chicago's South Side Writers Group met at the Abraham Lincoln Center and counted Arna Bontemps and Frank Marshall Davis among its members.

Which national magazine ran one of Margaret Walker's first published poems in 1934?

The Crisis, the NAACP magazine founded by W. E. B. Du Bois, published the poem while she was still an undergraduate.

Margaret Walker's minister father, Sigismund, emigrated from which part of the Caribbean?

Jamaica was his birthplace; he became a minister and college teacher who raised his four children to expect university degrees.

Which label known for Woody Guthrie records released three Margaret Walker poetry albums in 1975?

Folkways issued her readings of her own poems alongside those of Paul Laurence Dunbar and James Weldon Johnson; the Smithsonian acquired the label in 1987.

Margaret Walker's 1970s publisher Broadside Press was founded by poet Dudley Randall in which city?

Detroit's Broadside Press began in 1965 with single poems printed on broadsides and went on to publish Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez.

In Margaret Walker's Jubilee, Vyry wins over wary white neighbors by doing what for a stranger?

Vyry hears the screams and stays to deliver her baby; the grateful family then rallies neighbors to help build the Browns a house.

In Margaret Walker's Jubilee, Aunt Sally trains Vyry for which job in the Dutton Big House?

Cook is the post Vyry earns after Aunt Sally is sold away, because her dishes taste identical to her teacher's.

Margaret Walker's Jubilee helped launch which genre, later home to Toni Morrison's Beloved?

Neo-slave narrative is the label for modern novels that reimagine bondage from the inside; Jubilee, from 1966, is counted among the first.

Which title did Margaret Walker give her 1989 volume of new and collected poems?

This Is My Century gathers more than fifty years of verse by a poet born in 1915, from her Depression-era debut onward.

Which poet chose Margaret Walker's For My People for a national prize in the last contest he judged?

Stephen Vincent Benét had to press hard for her to receive the award, Walker later learned; he died in 1943, months after the book appeared.

Margaret Walker's Jubilee won the Literary Fellowship Award of which Boston publishing house?

Houghton Mifflin's award gave new life to her career and sparked fresh academic interest in her poetry.

Near the end of Margaret Walker's Jubilee, Vyry's son boards a segregated train to which Alabama city?

Selma is the destination, a choice that ties the novel's closing pages to the civil rights struggles of the decade in which the book appeared.

In Margaret Walker's Jubilee, the nickname Vyry is short for which old-fashioned given name?

Elvira was also the name of the relative who told Walker the story: Elvira Ware Dozier, who lived with the family and minded the children.

Margaret Walker named a 1930s novel she never published after which Italian American neighborhood?

Goose Island stayed among her papers for decades; the manuscript went unpublished throughout her lifetime.

Which Southern-born U.S. president's administration gave Margaret Walker a Living Legacy Award?

Jimmy Carter's administration gave her the award; she also collected six honorary degrees plus Rosenwald, Ford and Fulbright fellowships.

The institute Margaret Walker founded in 1968 put her at the forefront of which new academic field?

Black studies was just emerging when she opened her institute; in 1971 it hosted a national conference to evaluate the young field.

Margaret Walker's mother, Marion, taught which subject on the same college faculty as her husband?

Music was Marion Walker's field, and she also read poetry and philosophy with her daughter from an early age.

Margaret Walker's father was a minister of which Protestant church, which also ran her schools?

Methodist ties lasted all her life: decades later she was a member of Central United Methodist Church in Mississippi's capital.

Besides her old street, what in Mississippi's capital is named for Margaret Walker Alexander?

A public library branch carries her name, as does Margaret Walker Alexander Drive, the renamed road she once lived on.