Walking beside Walker

The Maggie Walker National Historic Sight was made available to the public in 1985, located in the historic Jackson Ward. The central attraction for this multiple building sight is the home of Maggie Walker, preserved with about 90% of its original furniture, left in the exact condition it was in right up to the time of Walker’s death in 1934. The house was definitely the highlight of the visit for me, as it seemed the most genuine and authentic part of the entire sight. Being guided by a tour guide in small groups was very beneficial as it was clear that our guide had a passion for the impact Walker left on the African American community is the fields of education, socioeconomic class, and the overall leadership and “self help” that she promoted throughout her life. Walker was a member of the Independent Order of St. Luke, which was a group that dealt with issues of race, gender, and socioeconomic status, issues that hit close to home for Walker, as she was a black female born into a time when both were discriminated against. She later became the Grand Secretary-Treasurer for the Order, a promotion that led her on her path to being the first African-American woman in America to start a bank, serving as bank president for almost 30 years, then moving to become the chairman of the board. Maggie Walker was a fierce advocate for education and self-help leadership, especially for young African-American children and women, and fought to secure rights to these advantages for the betterment of her people.

My experience as the Historic Sight got off to a rocky start when I encountered the receptionist and received some information pamphlets. He gave me these packets of information, but not before he had to cross out and correct multiple mistakes printed inside of them. These mistakes ranged anywhere from the misplacement of text captions on the wrong photographs in the pamphlet, to a picture labeled as Maggie Walker but was actually a photo of her granddaughter, even to the year Walker was born, misprinted as 1867, when she was actually born in 1864. For a museum dedicated entirely to this woman’s life, I was a bit dismayed at these important factual errors, which was reinforced after viewing a short film on her life. The guide claimed that the film was narrated by Walker herself, as it was audio from a speech she gave to young black children. But when I heard the same factual errors that were crossed out from my information pamphlets, I once again questioned the authenticity of the sight, and it affected my visit throughout the rest of the tour.

My visit improved however once we entered Walker’s house. The tour guide painted a very detailed picture of the significance of the room we were standing in. Because most of the furniture and other artifacts had not been moved, and were preserved just as Walker had left them, I felt as if I was standing among the shadows of great leaders and influential people in history, including Maggie Walker. To walk through the same rooms as this amazing woman who paved a path of leadership and education, demonstrated by her extensive personal library, really brought me back into a state of respect and admiration for Walker and really impressed me with how well the historic site preserved not only the objects in the house, but presented them in a way to create such respect and the feeling that Walker might even have just left the room I was standing in.

Her bedroom was also very telling of her personal character. It was adorned with many paintings, crosses and crucifixes, bibles, and other religious references, which spoke to her dedication to her faith. This was interesting intertextually with the film I viewed at the beginning of my visit, which told a story of her first time going to church, which didn’t happen through her family, but through an invitation to Sunday school from a friend. This visit was her first, even though the church was only two blocks away from her house, but it made quite an impact on how Walker lived her life from then on, so it was fun to see the finished development of her faith laid out by the way her bedroom was decorated. At the conclusion of the tour, taking in the entire mansion as a whole, it really is a remarkable, tangible account of Maggie Walker’s journey from being a young black girl born into poverty, to becoming a true leader built on the pillars of faith, education, and self-help, a concept taught to her through church and personal experience in a time of prejudice and intolerance.

So while my visit didn’t exactly begin the way I had expected it to, it certainly came together at the end and took me on my own journey through the life of Maggie L. Walker, who left a legacy all women should attempt to exemplify.