Selections from the Margaret Walker Personal Papers Digital Archives
Title
Selections from the Margaret Walker Personal Papers Digital Archives
Date Modified
2025-12-12
Description
The result of two major grants in 2008—one from the Ford Foundation and the other from National Endowment for the Humanities—the digitization project was completed in 2012.
Over 130 of Margaret Walker’s personal journals, dating from the 1930s to the 1990s, were digitized and made available to the general public. In addition to the journals, correspondence, writing notes, and more items were digitized and helped grow the total of the collection available online to the public to 50%.
Curated By
Garrad Lee
Contributing Institution
Jackson State University
About This Record
The HCAC public history focused digital archive cataloging is an ongoing process, and we may update this record as we conduct additional research and review. We welcome your comments and feedback if you have more information to share about an item featured on the site, please contact us at: HCAC-DigiTeam@si.edu
A page of a draft of Margaret Walker’s biography of Richard Wright with edits. She writes about Wright’s Natchez years.. After exhaustive research and extended legal battle, Margaret Walker published her biography of famed novelist Richard Wright. She titled the biography, “Richard Wright Daemonic Genius,” published by Warner Books in 1988.
In this entry, Margaret Walker is writing from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is reacting to the assassanation that day of Martin Luther King Jr., writing, “May God have mercy on us! What will happen next?” This page also reflects her doodling, which can be found across the entire collection of her journals.
“Margaret Walker Reads Margaret Walker And Langston Hughes” was released on vinyl in 1975 by Folkway Records. On the record, Margaret Walker reads her poems as well as poems by the renowned American poet Langston Hughes.
Renowned writer and activist Alice Walker was a dear friend of Margaret Walker. In this letter, Alice Walker asks Margaret Walker for a copy of “How I Wrote Jubilee.” Alice Walker also mentions a new piece she has about Zora Neal Hurston and that she first heard of her in one of Margaret Walker’s classes she was auditing.
Pictured here with Margaret Walker (middle) and J.S.U. librarian Ernestine Lipscomb (right) is Dr. Eileen Southern (left) who was visiting Jackson State University to do a talk about her new book, “The Music of Black Americans” at the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now Margaret Walker Center).
On January 12, 1969, Margaret Walker organized the first Winter Convocation celebrating the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. Just 9 months after his assasination, this event would be one of the first formal celebrations of his birthday. The Margaret Walker Center has hosted the Convocation every year since 1969.
