{"id":379,"date":"2013-07-24T19:59:04","date_gmt":"2013-07-24T19:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/?page_id=379"},"modified":"2026-11-04T22:08:01","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T22:08:01","slug":"for-researchers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/collections\/digital-archives-project\/for-researchers\/","title":{"rendered":"For Researchers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Margaret Walker Alexander Personal Papers<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/h3>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/span>
\nMargaret Walker\u2019s (<\/span>Biography<\/a><\/span>) academic and artistic legacies as a scholar, author, teacher, and activist are unparalleled.\u00a0 With classic works such as her poem \u201cFor My People\u201d and the neo-slave narrative\u00a0Jubilee<\/em>, based on the memories of her maternal grandmother, Walker was a tangible connection between the diverse group of artists who comprised the Harlem Renaissance and modern black writers such as Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and James Baldwin.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Jackson State University, Margaret Walker was a long-time faculty member in the English Department, and, in 1968, she founded the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People\u2014a museum and archive at JSU that today bears her name: the Margaret Walker Center for the Study of the African-American Experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Walker\u2019s literary, administrative, and personal papers are the centerpiece of the Center\u2019s manuscript collections.\u00a0 One of the single largest collections of a modern, black female writer anywhere in the world, approximately 50 percent of these papers are being digitized and posted online for scholars, educators, students, and all people interested in the life and times of Margaret Walker.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The result of two major grants in 2008\u2014one from the\u00a0<\/span>Ford Foundation<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and the other from\u00a0<\/span>National Endowment for the Humanities<\/a><\/span>\u2014this digitization project is unequaled, particularly for an archive at a historically black college or university.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to the efforts of twenty-three staff members over the past three years, the first stage of this project has now been completed, and over 130 of Margaret Walker\u2019s personal journals, numbering more than 10,000 handwritten pages and dating from the 1930s to the 1990s, are now available to the general public.<\/span><\/p>\n

Do not hesitate to contact the\u00a0<\/span>Margaret Walker Center<\/a><\/span>\u00a0with any questions, concerns, and ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margaret Walker Alexander Personal Papers Introduction Margaret Walker\u2019s (Biography) academic and artistic legacies as a scholar, author, teacher, and activist are unparalleled.\u00a0 With classic works such as her poem \u201cFor My People\u201d and the neo-slave narrative\u00a0Jubilee, based on the memories of her maternal grandmother, Walker was a tangible connection between the diverse group of artists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_mc_calendar":[]},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5781,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/379\/revisions\/5781"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jsums.edu\/margaretwalkercenter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}