At fourteen Margaret completed high school in New Orleans and enrolled in New Orleans University, now Dillard University. Two years later, with the encouragement of Langston Hughes, she left the South, finishing her bachelor's degree at Northwestern University in 1935 only a few months after her twentieth birthday. Soon after graduation she joined the Federal Writers Project in Chicago, where she met Wright, Nelson Algren, Willard Motley, and other promising young writers. In 1939 she left the project, and by 1940 she had received her M.A. from the University of Iowa. In 1942 she married Firnist James Alexander, with whom she had four children. She later returned to the University of Iowa, receiving her Ph.D. in 1965.
Beginning with her first collection of poetry, For My People (1942), selected by Stephen Vincent Benét for the Yale Younger Poets Series, Walker's writing has been infused with her humanism. Her work is animated by her desire to champion African American heroism and her belief that despite racism, poverty, and oppression, African Americans will continue to work toward a better world. As a writer, she takes seriously her role in this process of bringing about social justice.
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