Biography of Maggie Lena Walker

Name: Maggie Lena Walker
Birth Date: 1867
Death Date: December 15, 1934
Place of Birth: Richmond, Virginia, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Female
Occupations: entrepreneur, civic leader

Maggie Lena Walker

Maggie Lena Walker (1867-1934) was an African American entrepreneur and civic leader. She and her associates organized a variety of enterprises that advanced the African American community while expanding the public role of women.Maggie Lena Walker was born in Richmond, Virginia, just after the Civil War. Family tradition says that her father was Eccles Cuthbert, an Irish-born newspaperman. Her mother, Elizabeth Draper, married William Mitchell while they were both working in the home of Elizabeth Van Lew, a famous Union spy. He later became a waiter in one of the fashionable hotels in the city, but after only a few years was found drowned. Elizabeth Mitchell then supported her family by doing laundry. They lived in a small alley house shared with several relatives.Despite her poverty, she persevered through the city school system and graduated from the Colored Normal School in 1883. Her class of seven protested the fact that …showed first 150 words…

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…showed last 150 words…for murder, but acquitted. Walker had severe health problems and spent the last seven years of her life in a wheelchair. However, she continued to travel to places as far away as Florida and Chicago. Walker died of diabetic gangrene on December 15, 1934. According to tradition, her last message was "Have hope, have faith, have courage, and carry on." Associated Organizations Further Reading The standard book on Maggie Walker is still Maggie L. Walker and the I.O. of St. Luke: The Woman and Her Work by her lifelong friend and classmate Wendell P. Dabney (1927). Brief biographical sketches include Sadie Daniel St. Clair's in Notable American Women, 1607-1960 (1971) and Rayford Logan's in the Dictionary of American Negro Biography, edited by Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston (1982). Longer accounts are in Lily H. Hammond's In the Vanguard of the Race (1922), Mary White Ovington's Portraits in Color (1927), and Sadie I. Daniel's Women Builders (1931).

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