Maggie Walker
Maggie Lena Walker 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 on July 15, 1867 in Virginia, Richmond, just after the American Civil War. Her stepfather was William Mitchell, who was the former butler to the VanLew family. Her birth father was a white reporter for a New York newspaper who was working in Richmond. Her mother, Elizabeth Draper Mitchell, was a former slave and assistant cook in the church hill mansion of Elizabeth Van Lew, who had been a spy in the Confederate capital city of Richmond for the union during the War, and later postmistress for Richmond. The mansion’s owner was a Quaker woman who was suspected of offering her home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, she had released Maggie mother from slavery before the Civil War. After the death of William Mitchell, Elizabeth Mitchell then supported her family by working as a laundress. They lived in a small alley house shared with several relatives.
Maggie attended Richmond public schools and helped her mother by delivering the clean clothes. As Maggie Walker was to say, “I was not born with a sliver spoon in my mouth, but with a laundry basket practically on my head.” Maggie graduated from the Colored Normal School in 1883. After Maggie graduated form the normal school, her former teacher and principal, Lizzie Knowles, offered her a teaching position (Branch & Rice, 1997). She was in a class of seven protested the fact that African Americans were not allowed to use the city auditorium for their graduations as whites did, but had to use an African American church. Their stand was courageous since it risked their hopes for jobs as teachers in the system they challenged. A compromise permitted the graduation to take place in the school itself.
While she was still in high school Walker joined a fraternal...
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