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Maggie Lena Walker,
the first woman in the United States to become a president
of a local bank, was born July 15, 1867 in Richmond,
Virginia, U.S.A. She was a daughter of former slaves,
Elizabeth Draper Mitchell and William Mitchell, who
worked in the mansion of the abolitionist Elizabeth
Van Lew. After a few years of living at the mansion,
her father got a job as the head waiter at the Saint
Charles Hotel and the family moved to a small house
in town. Her father was murdered, presumably a victim
of robbery and her mother supported herself and her
two children with her laundry business while Maggie
helped with the chores. In addition, Maggie attended
the Lancaster School and then the Armstrong Normal
School. After graduation in 1883, she taught at the
Lancaster School until her marriage to Armstead Walker,
Jr., a building contractor, in September 1886. They
subsequently had three sons, though one died in infancy.
She also became an agent for an insurance company,
the Woman's Union.
Since the age
of fourteen, she had been a member of the Grand United
Order of St. Luke, an African-American fraternal and
cooperative insurance society founded in Baltimore
in 1867 by a former slave, Mary Prout, with headquarters
established in Richmond in 1889. The order had been
established to assure proper health care and burial
arrangements of its members and encouraged self-help
and racial solidarity. Walker worked her way up until,
in 1899, she became the executive secretary-treasurer
of the organization, now renamed the Independent Order
of St. Luke. The order was in debt at the time so
she accepted a reduced salary of eight dollars per
month.
In 1902, she started publishing a newsletter, the
St. Luke Herald to increase awareness of the activities
of the organization and to help in the educational
work of the order. The following year, she opened
the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank and became its president.
The bank's goal was to facilitate loans to the community.
By 1920, the bank helped purchase about 600 homes.
By 1924, the Independent Order of St. Luke had 50,000
members, 1500 local chapters, a staff of 50 working
in its Richmond headquarters and assets of almost
$400,000. The Penny Savings Bank absorbed all other
black-owned banks in Richmond in 1929 and became the
Consolidated Bank and Trust Companany with Walker
as its chairman of the board.
In 1912, she helped found the Richmond Council of
Colored Women and served as its president. The council
raised money for the support of Janie Porter Barrett’s
Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls and for
other philanthropies. She was a member of the International
Council of Women of the Darker Races, the National
Association of Wage Earners, National Urban League
and the Virginia Interracial Committee. She also cofounded
the Richmond branch of the NAACP (National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People).
Walker suffered more personal tragedies in her life.
In 1907, she fell on the front steps of her home and
injured her knees. The damaged nerves and tendons
continued to trouble her for the rest of her life.
She also suffered from diabetes and was confined to
a wheelchair after 1928. Her husband died in 1915
when her son, Russell Ecles Talmage, mistook his father
for a prowler on the porch and shot him. Russell was
acquitted of the murder charge, but he never recovered
from this ordeal and he died in 1923.
Walker died in Richmond, Virginia, on December 15,
1934. The cause of her death was listed as "diabetes
gangrene." The house her family occupied from
1904 to 1934 is now a Maggie L. Walker National Historic
Site and is located at 110 1/2 East Leigh Street.
LINKS:
- Consolidated
Bank
- US
Government and Culture and History web site
- Virginia Historical Society
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