Maggie Walker: Biography

Maggie Walker

Woman of Strength

In a war-torn city long ago, a tiny child was born. She was fatherless in a society that upheld marriage, penniless in a society that valued riches, female in a society that favored males, and dark-skinned in a country where the color of your skin mattered most of all. Sixty-six years later, when that same girl died, 13,000 schoolchildren lined the streets of that same city to bid her farewell, and telegrams of condolence poured in from across the nation. Newspapers reported her funeral as the largest held in that city-- ever. Who was this girl and what was the secret of her success? Her name was Maggie Lena Walker and she was a Virginian like you. This is her story...

Maggie Lena Walker was born two years after the end of the Civil War in Richmond, Virginia. She arrived in the heat of the summer, July 15, 1867, when Union soldiers occupied the defeated capital and the hopes of many white Southerners were in ashes. This was the time of Reconstruction. For Americans of African descent,it was a time of great hope and great uncertainty. The Thirteenth Amendment had ended slavery for good in 1865. The new Fourteenth Amendment went even further and granted full citizenship to all Americans, no matter their race. What would these changes mean for children like Maggie?

Maggie started out life in a mansion, but she was far from rich. Her mother, Elizabeth Draper, lived and worked at the mansion as a cook. 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’s mother from slavery before the Civil War.

At the time of Maggie’s birth,her mother was not married to Maggie’s father. He was a white reporter for a New York newspaper who was working in Richmond. In those days, it was illegal for people of different races to marry one another. When Maggie was ten months old, her mother married someone else. His name was William Mitchell and he was a butler who worked in the mansion with Elizabeth Draper. He raised Maggie as his own daughter. When Maggie’s half-brother Johnnie was born, William Mitchell moved his family from the mansion on the hill to a small home they could afford to rent. By then William Mitchell held what was regarded as a good job for African Americans. He was the head waiter at a nearby hotel. Maggie’s mother also continued to work. She had two very young children to look after but she also brought laundry home and scrubbed it by hand for white families.

When Maggie was nine years old, her world was turned upside down. William Mitchell was found drowned in the James River, perhaps murdered. His sudden death left his wife and children with no savings and little income. Maggie had less time to play. Now she worked with her mother to keep the family together. She carried great baskets of laundry through the streets of Richmond. She scrubbed and she ironed. She also looked after Johnnie who was always in trouble.

Despite great hardship, Maggie kept going to school, something her mother never had a chance to do. By the time Maggie was in high school, she belonged to a ve ry special group of A f r i c a n American teens. In those days, many children were not able to attend school. Maggie and her friends were getting an education that would prepare them for jobs that paid better than laundry work. She knew she was one of the lucky ones and that her community was counting on her. Education was something precious, and Maggie studied hard. She graduated from high school when she was only sixteen years old.

Maggie had training in many areas, but not many jobs were open to her because she was female and black. After high school, she took one of the few jobs available to educated women at that time. She became a teacher. For the next three years, Maggie tossed the lifeline of learning to other African American children the way her teachers had done for her. By day, she was earning her own money and doing something she loved. By night, she took more classes in business and accounting. She was determined to succeed!

The future was looking good for Maggie, but then she was forced to quit teaching. Why? At 19, she fell in love and married a handsome man named Armstead Walker. At that time,Virginia law did not allow married women to teach school. Virginia law also forbade women from voting or being elected to office, so there was no way Walker and other women could participate in writing-or re-writingthe laws of the governments that ruled them!

The law against teaching school was only one of the many unfair laws that limited Maggie’s choices and direction early in life. Being a woman was hard enough. But as an African American in the late 1800’s, Maggie could scarcely turn around without finding her freedoms blocked by Jim Crow laws. These laws sought to segregate Virginians by the color of their skin. African Americans had to follow rules about where to live, where to eat, and how to travel. They also faced countless daily prejudices.

Many people might have seen these unfair rules as permanent roadblocks,but Maggie referred to them only as stumbling blocks. She had set her sights high. It would take more than unfair laws to hold her back.

Maggie Walker could have gotten bitter about the many disappointments she faced,but she didn’t. She got busy. From a young age,Walker directed her energies and talents into places where she could make a difference. As a teenager, for example, she became active in a local Baptist church. This church had once been a place where blacks and whites had worshiped together, but during the Jim Crow era whites had pulled out. The remaining African Americans now looked to the church as a place where they could support each other free from the prejudices of the day. Here, men and women denied positions of leadership in Richmond were able to develop and use their talents. This was especially true for the many women who organized committees, Sunday Schools,and social events. Like many African American churches,Walker’s church was like an island of welcome in the midst of a stormy sea. It was a place to feel fully human, and to dream about being part of an America that truly lived up to its promises.

Maggie Walker decided to become a member of Old First Baptist Church when she was eleven years old. On her fourteenth birthday, she made another important decision. She joined a club whose members did good deeds in their neighborhoods. This club was a branch of an organization founded by a woman who had been enslaved in Maryland. This woman’s name was Mary Prout. After the Civil War this woman saw how difficult life was for those who had recently been freed from slavery. In the cities, these people were often without work or shelter or even families; many grew ill or died alone on the streets.

Prout knew she had to do something,so she got a group of freed women together and started an organization called the Daughters of Saint Luke (St. Luke was a follower of Jesus who cared for the sick). Members of St. Luke contributed a few pennies a month to form their own insurance group so that when a family faced a time of sickness or death, there would be money to help them. The organization quickly grew. Soon men were invited to join too and the group was re-named the Independent Order of St. Luke. The club was one of m a ny mutual benefit societies springing up at that time. It soon had branches in other cities including Richmond, where Walker joined.

Walker was the youngest member of the Order, but that did not stop her from getting involved. She was still going to school and helping her family, but she also found time to volunteer at the Richmond office. She liked being part of a circle of people who worked together for the good of all. During those first years with the Order of St. Luke, she learned about the needs of African Americans in Richmond and the problems many faced. She also gained experience in public speaking and organizing. Walker eagerly helped recruit new members to the Order and enjoyed telling others about what the group did.

Walker continued to be involved in the Order of St. Luke even after she got married and started having children. She gave birth to her first son, Russell, when she was twenty-three. A few years later she had a second son,Armstead, Jr. Sadly, this little boy died while he was still just a baby. That same year, Walker also buried someone else she loved dearly: her only brother. Johnnie had continued to get in trouble all his life; he had returned to Richmond at age 24, penniless and ill. Now he too was dead.

What would it feel like to lose your baby and your brother in the same year? Grief would have overwhelmed most people, but Walker kept going. Soon she brought a new idea forward to the Order. Why not create junior clubs of the Order that would attract children with fun activities but also help them develop self-respect, self-discipline and compassion? As usual, Walker was thinking of others,but perhaps she was also thinking how much Johnnie might have benefited from such a club when he was a boy. It was too late for Johnnie, but not for other children growing up in difficult times.

Members of St. Luke loved Walker’s idea. They let her work on this new project.Within a year, over a thousand Richmond children we re meeting in neighborhood clubs, having parties, and working together on service projects. Soon the Order appointed Maggie Walker to be the new Grand Deputy Matron of the Juvenile Branch. This meant that Wa l ker was in charge of all the wo m e n organizing these clubs. Wa l ker took on this responsibility in 1897 when she was thirty years old. That same year she gave birth to her third son, Melvin. Walker now had two sons, and an older daughter named Polly, whom she had adopted. As a mother,Walker had a lot of duties at home, but she found a way to keep on working for the organization she loved.

Maggie Walker had been a part of St. Luke’s for almost twenty years when the call for help came. In 1899, The Independent Order of St. Luke was in t ro u b l e. Wa l ke r ’s beloved Order was losing members and money. In fact, St. Luke’s had $400 in debts and only $31.61 in the bank. The Order turned to Walker: would she become the new leader of the entire organization? Walker agreed. She got a fancy title (Right Worthy Grand Secretary and Treasurer), but a hard task: could she save St. Luke’s before it was too late?

Walker had to work quickly. Surrounding herself with a circle of women advisers, she dreamed boldly. What could the Order do beyond helping the sick? Maggie Walker had an answer: it could strengthen the well! Why not build an organization that offered good jobs for African Americans? Why not encourage members to pool their money for loans so that they could buy their first homes or send their own children to college? Why not train young African American people to be leaders in a society that only wanted them to be followers?

Under Walker’s leadership, the I. O. of St. Luke took off--during the same decade the Wright Brothers airplane also first took flight! With a powerful speaking voice and a talent for calling out the best in everyone, Maggie Walker soon motivated hundreds and then thousands of African Americans to believe in her dream. Membership exploded. Money poured in.

By 1910, St. Luke’s had launched its own bank, a newspaper, a printing press , and a three - story department store. Walker remained at the helm 20th Century Virginia Role Models 4 and guided the growing economic empire with excellent business sense. She became the first woman bank president in the United States. She was also active in groups that tried to improve the relations between the races and that stood up for the rights of people often left out of decisionmaking: African Americans, women, and children. Walker and the Order she represented were at the height of their glory.

But these successes did not come easily. In Richmond, white merchants fought St.Luke’s efforts to develop businesses for its members. The white m e rchants did not want the African American community to become self-sufficient. They were prejudiced about skin color, but not about “money color”. They wanted African Americans to continue to give them all their business, and all their dollars. St. Luke’s also faced challenges from the U.S. stock market crash of 1929. This crash and the following Great Depression led to the failures of many selfhelp groups and banks. St Luke’s came through safe and sound, thanks to Walker’s wise decisions.

Walker also faced more difficult times in her personal life. In 1915, her husband Armstead was accidentally shot and killed by their 25-year-old son, Russell. During a hot summer night, he had mistaken his father for a burglar in their own home. The police weren’t convinced that the shooting was an accident. Russell had to stand trial twice for murder. Eventually he was found not guilty, but the scandal was heartbreaking to his mother. Because of the incident, some of her “friends” in the Order challenged her leadership and suggested she step down. Walker was hurt by their betrayal, but she didn’t resign. Russell himself never recovered from the ordeal. To his mother’s additional sorrow, he died several years later.

Walker also suffered physical setbacks. A few years earlier, she had fallen down a flight of stairs in her home, injuring her knee in a way that always made walking difficult. Eventually her condition worsened, and by the late 1920’s she made the decision to order a wheelchair, fit her house with an elevator, and keep on working. From that time forward, she was chauffeured from meeting to meeting and state to state in a customized Packard sedan.

Despite these hardships and heartaches, Maggie Walker carried on. When she died at home on December 15,1934,she was a wealthy woman. Her 25-room home in downtown Richmond was filled with books and beautiful things, plus toys of the grandchildren who lived with her. The Order of St. Luke had nearly 100,000 members in 23 states, and a half-million dollars in assets. The St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, now Consolidated Bank and Trust, was thriving.

The successes were impressive. But could it be that Walker’s greatest achievement was invisible? Could it be that her greatest success was the way she inspired thousands of children and adults to recognize the best in themselves? Throughout her life,Walker urged those left out to get together, set goals and reach their dreams. She let it be known that all who strive for something noble are “rightworthy” human beings--even if society tells them otherwise.

On that rainiest of winter days, it should be no surprise that so many Virginians, both black and white, gathered at the Old Baptist Church to bid this amazing woman farewell. Maggie Lena Walker deserved everyone’s respect, not only for what she did, but who she was: a person of great character.

Maggie Lena Walker came into a world hostile to all she was. She left the world beloved by thousands. What was her secret? She knew how to keep going, how to turn her own pain into a powerful compassion for others. Maggie Walker knew what it was like to be left out. All her life she worked for the rights of women, children, and Americans of African descent. Now it’s our turn. What can we do to build up that America of Walker’s dreams—the one where no one is left out and there is indeed liberty and justice for all?