HARDCOVER ISBN: 0-88258-211-9

$36.95

PAPERBACK ISBN: 0-88258-210-0

$24.95

352 pages; 6 x 9 inches

Featured on

National Public Radio

Morning Edition

with Bob Edwards

Friday October 31, 2003

Click Here to Listen Live!

Maggie Lena Walker: First Woman Bank President

___________________

Check out the review of

"A Right Worthy"

in the June 2004 issue of Black Enterprise magazine!

       Born of humble beginnings in post-Civil War Richmond, Maggie Lena Walker rose to prominence at the turn of the 20^th century as a pioneering insurance executive, financier, and civic icon.  A Right Worthy Grand Mission: Maggie Lena Walker and the Quest for Black Economic Empowerment, presents the most thoroughly researched and documented biography of Walker’s remarkable life and times, placing her solidly among the ranks of African America’s most industrious and ambitious early leaders.    

Revered to this day by black and white Virginians on a par with Hampton Institute’s Booker T. Washington, Maggie Walker was the consummate “race woman.”  Though renowned as one of the most highly paid and wealthiest black women of her time, she demonstrated an overarching commitment to hard work, frugality, prayer, and race vindication.  As her biographer, the late Gertrude W. Marlowe, writes, “Neither the term cultural heroine nor charismatic leader, although accurate descriptions and suggestive of certain aspects of Walker’s persona, seems adequate to comprehend her popularity.”  Marlowe capably explores her subject’s epic legacy in this exhaustive study, which uses the detailed approaches of ethnographic method and social history to unravel the layers of intrigue surrounding a great woman’s public and personal affairs. 

A Right Worthy Grand Mission begins at the crux of two centuries, with a nation struggling to repair the ruptures torn by slavery and rushing headlong into the Industrial Age.  It details the shadowy circumstances of Walker’s origins and early life, noting the solidity that came to her life when, at age 14, she joined a floundering African American fraternal and cooperative insurance society that later became the Independent Order of St. Luke (IOSL).  Established to assure proper health care and burial arrangements for its newly freed members and to encourage self-help and racial solidarity, the organization was plagued by mismanagement.  Walker rose rapidly through its ranks, assuming every office until 1890, when she took over the reins as Right Worthy Grand Chief.  The renaissance of “the St. Lukes,” newspaper columnists of the era proclaimed, began that day. 

Prior to 1890, the IOSL had 3,400 members, no reserve funds, no property, and a small staff.  By the mid-1920s, Maggie Walker, a woman of boundless energy and spellbinding oratorical skills, virtually single-handedly brought the organization to solvency.  She spearheaded the creation of a national newsletter to increase awareness of the Order’s insurance offerings and to spread the word about its upliftment activities.  She also founded a three-story dry goods store in Richmond’s historic Jackson Ward, then the center of the city’s black business and social life.  Then, in 1903, she established the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank—the nation’s oldest black-owned bank—becoming the very first black woman to charter a banking institution in the United States.  This was a bold and unprecedented economic move given the political climate of the segregated South and the race and gender inequities of the era.   

By 1924, at the peak of her leadership, IOSL membership exceeded 70,000 in 1,500 local chapters.  The Order boasted a staff of 50 working in its Richmond headquarters, assets of over $400,000, and payment of over $1 million in death claims.  Despite failing health and limited mobility, Walker successfully shepherded the bank through the Great Depression, merging it with two other black Richmond banks to form Consolidated Bank and Trust, the longest surviving black bank in the nation. 

Though Maggie Walker accomplished much in the way of public and civic duties, her personal life was fraught with successive calamities.  Early in her marriage she miscarried and lost her second child.  In 1907, she fell at home, injuring her knees.  The damaged nerves and tendons troubled her for the rest of her life, earning her the nickname, “the Lame Lioness.”  Scandal erupted in the Walker household in 1915 over the death of Walker’s husband, accidentally shot and killed by the couple’s eldest son.  The story dominated Richmond news and gossip columns for months and nearly ruined Walker’s reputation.  A Right Worthy Grand Mission exhumes and objectively presents the facts surrounding the case and the trial.

Despite these and other hardships, Maggie Walker forged ahead, remaining publicly optimistic to the very end.  In her last words, uttered from her deathbed, she urged her followers to “have faith, have hope, have courage, and carry on.”  Her funeral, in December 1934, was one of the largest held in Virginia, attracting black and white mourners alike to Richmond’s historic First African Baptist Church.  Other memorials and tributes followed for years afterward.  In 1978, her once lavishly appointed home on East Leigh Street was declared a national landmark by the U.S. Park Service.   The home now serves as a museum and repository of Walker’s papers, books, and awards—allowing visitors to step back in time to catch a glimpse of her world and exciting times. 

A Right Worthy Grand Mission: Maggie Lena Walker and the Quest for Black Economic Empowerment serves as a fitting tapestry upon which the events and moments that shaped the life of Maggie Lena Walker are woven firmly into the history of the South and all of America.

________________________________________________________________________________________

About the Author

The late GERTRUDE W. MARLOWE (1930-1996) was a professor of anthropology at Howard University from 1970 until 1992. She was a fellow of the American Public Health Association, American Anthropological Association, and Society for Applied Anthropology; and a member of the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History and Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Chi Omega honorary societies. She is remembered as a consummate teacher who brought to her students--some of whom worked with her on this important book project--the gifts of acute intellectual presence, scientific integrity, and fairness.

 Advance Comments

“Richmonders cherish the life and achievements of Maggie Walker. Her passion for economic empowerment [during] a time of terrible obstacles for African Americans led her to great success. Professor Marlowe’s work inspires with its full story of a remarkable woman.”

--Timothy M. Kaine, Lt. Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia

“Marlowe’s insights into Walker’s genius for African American institution building, banking, finance, and insurance has yielded an extraordinarily readable book that will be as instructive to audiences today as it is fascinating.”

--Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton

“Maggie Lena Walker was the foremother of black economic empowerment, the embodiment of the Kwanzaa symbol of UJAMAA (cooperative economics). For all her commitment to our community and to collective economic action, she was also a complex daughter, mother, and wife. A Right Worthy Grand Mission is an absorbing, engaging, and detailed history of Maggie Walker’s life and of the times in which she lived. It...reminds us that we stand on powerful shoulders as we continue the quest for black economic empowerment.”

--Dr. Julianne Malveaux Economist, Syndicated Columnist, and Author

“Maggie Lena Walker was a remarkable woman with a grand vision for black Americans and, especially, for the economic and political empowerment of African American woman. In this meticulously researched biography of Walker’s public life, Gertrude Marlowe expertly analyzes her [subject’s] organizational skills, business acumen, and oratorical prowess, situating her within the context of the vibrant institutional life of turn-of-the-twentieth-century black Richmond.”

--Elsa Barkley Brown, Assoc. Prof. of History and Women’s Studies, Univ. of Maryland

“Maggie Walker had such a rich life and the world needs to know about it.”

--Daniel R. Perkins, Jr. Church Historian, First African Baptist Church

© 1998-2000 Howard University, all rights reserved.  Last updated:27 January 2006.
HOWARD UNIVERSITY PRESS.  2225 Georgia Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20059.  Phone (202) 238-2570
Webmaster: University Press
Design & Production: Jamie Walker  
DISCLAIMER