Maggie Walker
Studio Portrait of Maggie L. Walker, early 20th century. Courtesy of National Park Service, Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site.
Maggie Lena Draper was born in Richmond, Virginia, on July 15, 1864, during the Civil War. Her mother, Elizabeth Draper, was a free Black cook who had once been enslaved. Her father was an Irish journalist named Eccles Cuthbert. Interracial relationships were illegal in Virginia at the time of Maggie’s birth, which may explain why Elizabeth married Black butler William Mitchell while Maggie was still a baby. William worked for a white family. He later became the head waiter at one of Richmond’s best hotels. Elizabeth gave birth to a second child, a son, in 1867. The family enjoyed modest financial security until William died in 1876. William was likely murdered, but his death was declared a suicide to cover it up. Facing dire poverty, Elizabeth started a laundry business. Maggie worked alongside her mother to keep the family afloat.
Maggie grew up at a very challenging time for Black Americans. Right at the end of the Civil War, there was a short period called Reconstruction where new laws made it seem like Black Americans might achieve full legal, social, and economic equality. But by the time Maggie was a teen, a new system of racial segregation and discrimination known as Jim Crow was gaining ground all over the nation. Jim Crow laws, customs, and threats sought to narrow every aspect of Black Americans’ lives to keep them subordinate to whites.
Black Americans had to figure out how to stay safe, support themselves, educate their children, and fight for their rights in the face of the rise of Jim Crow. Strategies varied. Some fought the unfair laws in court. Some wrote books and editorials to raise awareness about the plight of Black Americans. Some left the South in search of better lives in the North or West. But most, including Maggie, remained in place and leveraged the power of community and self-reliance.
Like many Black Americans, Elizabeth believed that education was the best way for Black children to improve their place in society. She made sure that Maggie and her brother attended one of the city’s public schools for Black students. But she could not protect her children from the racist policies of the Jim Crow era. As a teenager, Maggie found support at Richmond First African Baptist Church and the Independent Order of Saint Luke (IOSL). IOSL was a national association of Black Americans founded in 1867. Like the other fraternal societies that were popular in the 1800s, it was dedicated to doing good works for its members and charitable activities for its community. IOSL was a group founded specifically by and for Black Americans, and Maggie remained a committed member her whole life.
When Maggie graduated from the Richmond Colored Normal School in 1870 at age sixteen, she joined other students to protest the city’s policy of holding separate graduation ceremonies for white and Black students. “Our parents pay taxes just the same as you white folks,” they argued. Their activism was important because it raised awareness about the unfairness of segregation policies. But it did not lead to the change they hoped for. A few months after graduation, Maggie took a job as a teacher at one of the Black American schools in the city. She taught until she married Armstead Walker Jr. in 1886. The Richmond school district did not permit married women to teach, so she had to give up her career. Maggie and Armstead adopted a daughter and had three sons, two of whom survived to adulthood.
After retiring from teaching, Maggie dedicated her life to the important work of uplifting Black Americans in her home neighborhood of Jackson Ward, the center of Richmond’s Black business and social life. In 1901 she announced a plan to start projects that would expand the IOSL’s reach and provide important services to Black Americans. She started a newspaper, the St. Luke Herald, to spread the word about IOSL and speak out against racial injustice. Maggie led the IOSL for thirty-five years and increased its membership from 3,400 in 1890 to more than 70,000 in 1924.
“After retiring from teaching, Maggie dedicated her life to the important work of uplifting Black Americans in her home neighborhood of Jackson Ward”
During her years working as a laundress and a teacher, Maggie had built a strong network of Black leaders and entrepreneurs. She had also experienced first-hand how segregation in the financial sector kept Black Americans from achieving their full potential. To address this injustice, she founded the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in 1903. She was the first Black woman to start a bank in the United States and the first to serve as a bank president. Because the bank was staffed by Black Americans, customers could manage their money without encountering the mistreatment they encountered at white-run banks. The bank survived the Great Depression in the 1930s and is still in existence today.
In 1905 Maggie expanded her community services by opening a department store called the St. Luke Emporium. At a time when Black women faced racial aggression every time they shopped in white-owned stores, the Emporium was a welcome relief. Like her bank, the store employed and served local Black residents in Jackson Ward. Maggie also bought the neighborhood’s most elegant home. Today her home is a National Park Service site.
In addition to these community services, Maggie used her growing wealth and platform to speak out about Jim Crow policies. She spoke frequently to Black audiences around the country, using inspiring biblical references to describe clearly what progress could look like. In 1907 she delivered a speech in Richmond, denouncing segregation: “The song which the white press, the white pulpit and the white public men are singing is the song of separation. Separate public conveyances, separate schools, separate churches, separate places of amusements, separate hotels, separate depots, separate localities in which to live. ‘Separate’ is the cry daily: go to another country, get out, go away; if you want to remain here, you must be my menial, be my servant: and if you want to be what I am — a MAN — separate. Go where I can’t see you.”
Jackson Ward was always at the heart of Maggie’s work, but she also contributed to larger city projects. She collaborated with Janet Randolph to raise funds for a Black ward for the local hospital, located a block away from where white patients were treated. Both were members of the executive committee of the Community House for Colored People, which provided shelter, health care, food, and economic assistance.
Maggie also supported national efforts to fight racism and improve opportunities for Black Americans, especially Black women. In 1915 Maggie’s personal life was shaken by another family tragedy: one of her sons accidentally shot his father while they were trying to stop a burglary in their home. Her son never recovered from the trauma and took his own life in 1923.
After her husband’s death in 1915 Maggie used her estate to support various civic organizations focused on uplifting Black Americans. She served on the boards of the National Association of Colored Women, the Virginia Industrial School for Girls, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
An illness in 1928 left Maggie confined to a wheelchair. This did not stop her activist work. She continued to fight both for women’s rights and the rights of Black Americans until she died on December 15, 1934. Today, a bronze statue of Maggie Walker stands in Jackson Ward.
Vocabulary
- emancipated: Freed from the conditions of being enslaved
- fraternal society: A voluntary association of people with shared interests who come together for a common purpose.
- Jim Crow: The name for the many laws, rules, and customs that maintained segregation after the Civil War, often through violence and intimidation. The original Jim Crow was a minstrel character performed by a white actor in blackface to ridicule Black Americans.
- National Association of Colored Women (NACW): Organization committed to the empowerment of Black women and communities.
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): An organization committed to fighting for the rights of Black Americans.
- Reconstruction: The years between 1865 and 1877 when the federal government actively sought to reincorporate the former Confederacy back into the United States and integrate Black Americans into the nation’s economics, politics, and society.
Discussion Questions
- How did Maggie Walker foster self-sufficiency in Richmond’s Black community?
- In what ways did Maggie Walker challenge stereotypes about Black Americans and women?
- How did Maggie Walker combine a life in business with a life of activism and civic engagement? What can we learn from her story about the relationship between these two pursuits?
Suggested Activities
- Use the Life Story of Maggie Walker to discuss how Black Americans worked to improve their lives under oppressive Jim Crow policies.
- Pair this Life Story with any or all of the following resources for a more comprehensive study of women’s experiences and activism during the rise of Jim Crow:
- Pair this Life Story with any of the following resources for a more comprehensive study of women in industry and social mobility:
Themes
ACTIVISM AND SOCIAL CHANGE; WORK, LABOR, AND ECONOMY
