About 1,000 people joined at Jackson State University’s 47th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Convocation on Friday to celebrate “two preacher’s kids” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Margaret Walker.
Or, as JSU President Carolyn W. Meyers added to appreciative applause while welcoming the gathering, they were there to pay homage to “a preacher and a teacher.”
Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber expanded on the idea, saying that one of the most important questions a person can ask is: “Why are we here?”
Both King and Walker “had that figured out,” he said.
They left a lesson for all of us, Yarber said, quoting King: “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
The festivities kicked off the year-long celebration of the life of the renowned author and late JSU professor often known locally by her married name of Margaret Walker Alexander but known in literary circles as Margaret Walker.
Keynote speaker Paula Giddings, a professor of African-American studies at Smith College, recalled several stories from her friendship with Walker.
She said Walker was a “genius,” adding for the benefit of the hundreds of students that “genius is always inside of you.”
Walker was only 21 when she published her signature poem For My People, Giddings said. But that poem “wasn’t just her signature poem, but our signature poem as a people.”
“She was not afraid to tell the truth,” Giddings said of Walker, including hard truths about the people and things she loved. She quoted from Walker’s own observations about being employed as a professor at JSU, including pressure to resign at one point in her career.
Giddings recounted Walker’s struggles in going back to graduate school, taking out loans, moving to Iowa, having to care for her children, and ultimately reinventing herself and returning to JSU where she carved an arc as a leading literary light.
Walker had the knack of making people “better than they knew,” she said. “She loved to try new things, anything.”
Giddings was a senior at Howard University giving a poetry reading when she met Walker and became friends when she went on to work for Howard University Press. She edited the book, A Poetic Equation: Conversations between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker, published in 1974.
Dr. Robert Luckett, director of JSU’s Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African-American Experience, surprised Giddings after her remarks. After noting that thousands of pages of Walker’s journal are now digitalized and on the Center’s website, he read aloud a letter of recommendation Walker wrote for Giddings. That letter resulted in a grant that helped produce Giddings 1983 book, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America.
“This is the first I’ve heard of this,” Giddings said, appearing deeply touched by Walker’s endorsement.
Luckett also gave her copies of photos from the Center’s collection that show Giddings and Walker at the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival Walker organized at JSU in 1973.
Giddings was also presented flowers by Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
Giddings was greeted with remarks by Keonte M. Turner, Student Government Association President and by Anissa C. Butler, Miss Jackson State University, among a host of dignitaries.
Following the Convocation, a smaller (but sellout) crowd attended the For My People Awards Luncheon at the JSU Student Center Ballroom.
Presented awards were Giddings, JSU President Emeritus Dr. John A. Peoples Jr., and Pamela D.C. Junior, manager of the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center, along with the museum itself.
Peoples earned a standing ovation after sharing his recollections of Walker. He was a junior at Jackson State when he heard of this wonderful professor, he said. He checked her out and concluded, “I wish I had taken her (English class),” he said.
Walker was “one of my favorite colleagues,” he said, when he later joined the faculty. “She was a great person.”
Junior had the crowd in the palm of her hand, telling stories about growing up in West Jackson on Lynch Street, along humorous tales from her JSU student days.
Her people, she said, were slaves who were transported to America in a boat like that exhibited at Smith Robertson. Her people, she said, were those who grew up in West Jackson. Her people include the city of Jackson, the Smith Robertson School and the Smith Robertston staff members.
“I accept this as an award for my people,” she said, to a standing ovation.
Reginald Thompson, a Walker Center Advisory Board member, at the event’s conclusion, urged those in attendance to see the “living history” around them. About 40 people stood up when he asked how many knew Walker.
“History is a very living thing,” Thompson said. “Take the time to know who you are and where you come from.”
The 2015 Margaret Walker Centennial celebrations continue at 6 p.m. Jan. 22 at Jackson’s Eudora Welty Library with a talk on The Literary and Historical Importance of Margaret Walker’s Life by Luckett.
He will provide details of Walker’s interactions with the leading lights of literature of her time, including Richard Wright, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, as well as her proper role as part of the Chicago literary movement.
The Margaret Walker Center and the Jackson Hinds Library System in December announced year-long plans to celebrate the 2015 Margaret Walker Centennial.
Called “This is My Century: The Life and Legacy of Margaret Walker,” the Centennial starts in January at JSU and includes activities at every library branch in Jackson/Hinds and events across the state.
The Centennial will figure largely in the Mississippi Humanities Council’s Symposium on the 150th Anniversary of Emancipation in April. There even will be a midsummer Jubilee Picnic at the historic Ayer Hall on the JSU campus. Her life and work will figure prominently at the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration in February and the Oxford Conference for the Book in April.
The Centennial will also by celebrated at Jackson’s Aug. 22, Mississippi Book Festival.
For more information, see: https://www.jsums.edu/margaretwalkercenter/