Descendant of Slaves Is a Living Glimpse of History
Margaret Walker Alexander at 74 is a living time capsule of the agony of black education in Mississippi.
Her great-grandfather was a literate freed blacksmith in Georgia who fell in love with a slave while shoeing horses on a plantation. One of their children became a Baptist minister and helped found a Negro college in an abandoned hospital in Natchez that became Jackson State University.
As a child she knew theinside of one of the 4,000 little white schoolhouses built for blacks in the South throughthe philanthropy of Sears, Roebuck & Co. millionaire Julius Rosenwald.
Alexander got two degrees from Northwestern University and returned to Jackson State to teach. She has written poetry, a novel and a biography of black novelist Richard Wright, author of “Native Son.” She lives on a street in Jackson that is named for her.
“I’ve seen three revolutions in my time: the New Deal, civil rights and the Electronic Age,” she said.
“My grandparents said education was the most important. My grandchildren say education is not enough. There has to be economic accessibility.”
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