Black History Month would not be complete without the story of an amazing woman, Maggie Lena Walker, who was born in Richmond, Virginia on July 15, 1864, during the Civil War.
Walker’s mother, Elizabeth Draper, was a former slave who worked as an assistant cook for Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy white woman who freed some of her family’s enslaved laborers and who ran a Union spy network around Richmond during that time.
While working at the Van Lew estate, Draper met an Irish American abolitionist writer named Eccles Cuthbert, who was Maggie’s biological father. While there is no record of a marriage between Draper and Cuthbert, Draper later married one William Mitchell, a butler at the Van Lew home in March 1868. Maggie was four years old.
Sadly, in February 1876, William Mitchell’s body was found drowned in the James River under suspicious circumstances. It was after the death of Mitchell that the family fell on hard times, with Draper having to start a laundry business to support her family of two children, Maggie and her half-brother, Johnnie.
The Mitchell family moved to their own home on College Alley off of Broad Street nearby Miss Van Lew’s home where Maggie and her brother Johnnie were raised.
Maggie went to school in Richmond at the Lancasterian School, a newly created public school for African American children in Richmond. She later graduated from the “Richmond Colored Normal School” in 1883, certified to be a teacher.
Maggie taught school for three years until she married Armstead Walker Jr., a successful brick maker, in 1886. At that time, women teachers who got married had to step down from teaching.
However, after leaving her teaching position in 1886, Maggie devoted herself to the Independent Order of St. Luke, a fraternal burial society, established in 1867 in Baltimore, Maryland. She had joined the order in 1881- at the age of 14 – and over the years had held many positions in the local chapter.
The making of a businesswoman
Perhaps because she was a teacher, or due to her excellence in mathematics, along with her accounting skills, in 1902, Maggie Walker started a community insurance company for women. From there she continued her entrepreneurial pursuits.
Not stopping at just running an insurance company, Walker also published a newspaper for the organization, called the St. Luke Herald.
Shortly after, she chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. Walker served as the bank’s first president, which earned her the recognition of being the first African American woman to charter a bank in the United States.
As an interesting aside, Walker’s bank building was designed by Charles Thaddeus Russell, Richmond’s first resident African-American architect. Russell employed mostly black contractors and artisans. He came into prominence at a time when Richmond’s Jackson Ward was rising as a center of black finance and commercial enterprise.
The St. Luke Penny Savings Bank had several women as board members and became a powerful representation of black self-help in the segregated South. It is also worth noting that during the Great Depression, Walker’s bank was one of only a few that survived the national wave of bank failures.
Later, Walker agreed to serve as chairman of the board of directors when the bank merged with two other Richmond banks to become The Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, which grew to serve generations of Richmonders as an African-American-owned institution. It is still in operation today.
On December 15, 1934, Walker died from complications due to diabetes. Walker’s house in Richmond has since been designated a National Historic Site by the National Park Service.
Maggie L.Walker’s legacy is alive and well
This journalist has been fascinated by Walker’s story from the first time I came across it, years ago. And yes, Maggie Walker has left a legacy that lives on today.
In Walker’s honor Richmond Public Schools built a large brick high school adjacent to Virginia Union University. Maggie L. Walker High School was one of two schools in the area for black students during the Jim Crow era; the other was Armstrong High School.
In 2001, the Maggie L. Walker High School was totally refurbished and transformed into a regional Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies.
The National Park Service operates the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site at her former Jackson Ward home at 110 ½ East Leigh Street. In her honor, a statue and plaza were also placed on Richmond’s Broad Street.
The National Park Service summarizes Walker’s legacy with the statement, “Through her guidance of the Independent Order of St. Luke, Walker demonstrated that African American men and women could be leaders in business, politics, and education during a time when society insisted on the contrary.”
