SOURCE: Graham, Maryemma. “Margaret Walker: Fully a Poet, Fully a Woman (1915-1998).” Black Scholar 29, nos. 2/3 (summer 1999): 37-46.

In the following essay written after Walker's death, Graham offers an overview of her life and work, placing Walker in the context of her literary times.

Margaret Abigail Walker was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1915, into a family of storytellers and musicians, ministers and teachers. The Walker family—three sisters and a brother, parents and maternal grandmother—lived as a closely knit group during her early years in Alabama and Mississippi, and finally Louisiana, the place that Walker always called home, the South of her memory before and after leaving it for the first time. Strong advocates of education as a means toward racial progress and individual development, her parents nurtured and encouraged each child's individual talents. The first-born in the family, she was her father's favorite child. He gave her...