BY RYAN DOUGHERTY
That Maggie L. Walker made history by becoming the first woman to found and lead a bank, one that, in her words, could "take the nickels and turn them into dollars," seems fitting. Throughout a childhood marked by poverty and despair, Walker learned early on how to overcome adversity, to make nothing into something-values that guided her through a most extraordinary life.
Walker was born in 1867 in Richmond, Virginia. The mysterious death of her stepfather nine years later plunged her family into poverty. Her mother washed clothes to support her family, and by helping her, Walker learned first-hand about self-sufficiency. "I was not born with a silver spoon in [my] mouth," she said, "but instead with a clothes basket atop my head."
At age 11, Walker joined the First African Baptist Church, whose members prayed and worked together to boost the community. They inspired her. She studied scripture, which later surfaced in her writings and speeches, and participated in church activities. Two years later, Walker joined the local Independent Order of St. Luke, an organization that aided African Americans in times of trouble. Within a decade, she would use her fiscal sense and public relations know-how to turn the struggling Order into a successful financial organization.
Walker graduated from the Richmond Colored Normal School at age 16, but not before organizing a strike among black students to fight unequal graduation ceremonies held for blacks and whites. She then taught elementary school for three years, and, in 1886, married Armstead Walker Jr., a brick contractor. In those days, it was illegal for married women in America to teach, so Walker worked to improve the Order, fostering opportunity for women.
"If our women want to avoid the traps and snares of life," she said, "they must band themselves together, organize, and acknowledge leadership for themselves."
By 1901, Walker also sought to empower women and blacks economically. She established a savings bank run by the Order. "Let us put our money together at usury among ourselves and reap the benefits ourselves." Two years later, the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank became the first bank in America founded and led by a woman. It remains today as Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, the country's oldest continually operated African-American bank.
By the time Walker's family moved to 110 1?2 East Leigh Street, she was known as a dynamic leader in Richmond's thriving black community of Jackson Ward. Besides founding a bank, devoting decades to the Order, and caring for her husband and two sons, Walker found time to start a weekly newspaper, advise organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and work with leaders such as W.E.B. DuBois.
But Walker again suffered tragedy in 1915, when her husband was accidentally killed. That left her in charge of her bustling household, which now included her sons' wives and, later, four grandchildren. Walker supported the family through her investments and hard work until 1934, when she died at home of diabetic gangrene.
By then, Walker was widely known as a progressive and talented woman who created opportunity and advocated equal rights for oppressed blacks and women. Those who knew her best, however, remembered Walker in simpler terms: a woman who never lost sight of her devotion to family and faith.
