Javon Browne

2/24/14

Oral Presentation
Alice Walker
She was born on February 4, 1944. American author and activist. Born in Putnam County,
Georgia
Was the youngest of eight (parents are Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant)
Was enrolled in first grade when she was four years old
She began writing (in private) when she was eight with her inspiration coming from her
grandfather who used to tell her stories
1952- Her right eye was wounded when one of her brothers fired a BB gun. The family didnt
own a car so it took them a very long time to get to the hospital, a week later she was
permanently blind in that eye. A layer of tissue formed over her eye and she was continuously
stared at and teased.
When she was 14 that layer of tissue was removed. She would go on to become valedictorian,
voted most popular girl, and queen of her senior class.
1961- She was given a full scholarship and attended Spelman College in Atlanta, but later on she
transferred to Sarah Lawrence College, and graduated in 1965.
She was interested in the Civil Right Movement because she was connected to the activist
Howard Zinn (He was her professor at Spelman College).
Walker returned to the South where she became involved with voter registration drives,
campaigns for welfare rights, and children's programs in Mississippi.
March 17, 1967- she married Melvyn Roseman Leventhal.
She worked as a writer in residence at Jackson State College (1968-1969) and Tougaloo College
(19701971) and was a consultant in black history to the Friends of the Children of Mississippi
Head Start program.
Walker's first book of poetry was written while she was a senior at Sarah Lawrence. During the
civil rights movement she took a break from writing. She began writing again when she joined
with Ms. Magazine as an editor.
Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was published in 1970. In 1976, Walker's
second novel, Meridian, was published it dealt with activist workers in the South during the civil
rights movement, and connected with some of Walker's own experiences.
In 1982, Walker published her best work, The Color Purple. The novel follows a young troubled
black woman fighting her way through not just racist white culture but patriarchal black culture
as well. The book became a bestseller and was adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie as
well as a 2005 Broadway Musical.
1984- Co-founder of Wild Tree Press, it was a feminist publishing company in Anderson Valley,
California.
Her work is focused on the struggles of black people, particularly women, and their lives in a
racist, sexist, and violent society.
In 1965, Walker met Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were
married on March 17, 1967, in New York City. Later that year the couple relocated to Jackson,
Mississippi. They became "the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi". They were
harassed and threatened by whites, including the KKK (Ku Klux Klan). The couple had a daughter
Rebecca in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976.
In 2013, Alice Walker released two new books; one of them entitled The Cushion in the Road:
Meditation and Wandering as the Whole World Awakens to Being in Harm's Way. The other was
a book of poems entitled The World Will Follow Joy Turning Madness into Flowers.