Monthly Archives: January 2018

Dr. Walker’s Speeches and Other Writings

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) One of the most intriguing sets of materials donated by Dr. Walker: audio cassette recordings of many of his sermons and speeches. Some of the earliest cassettes date from the 1970s, while the latest were recorded in the early 2000s. That’s approximately three decades of sermons. I’ll talk more about the unique challenges of processing audio material when I get to really dig in, but I wanted to mention them to accentuate another set of materials Dr. Walker donated: written notes and manuscript copies of speeches and writings, including drafts of some book chapters – and an unpublished book. This #wyattwalkerwednesday, I want to take a deeper dive into these materials.

Much of this material predates even the earliest audio cassettes, with some of the material going as far back as 1963. Much of this writing focuses on Dr. Walker’s work on civil rights and desegregation, as well as gospel music and his international religious activities. These, coupled with the sermons recorded during his tenure as pastor of Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem, help provide a wider view of the man as he represented himself in public.

One of these manuscripts that is of particular interest is an unpublished work approximately 200 pages long entitled “King of Love.” This unpublished book, written between 1993 and 1995, is Walker’s retrospective look at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his work both in the church and in the Civil Rights Movement of the ’50s and ’60s. Because this manuscript was never published, we may hold the only extant copy of a work closely reviewing the life of one of the greatest civil rights leaders in U.S. history, written by one of his closest friends and advisors. This work is entirely unprecedented, and its potential for research into both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Walker cannot be overestimated.

Left: Photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker. Right: Title page of “The King of Love” manuscript.

Overall, this series of material – Dr. Walker’s writings and speeches – has some incredible research potential. And don’t forget, we still have more material to add into the current structure of described material, so there’s a good chance we’ll add more to this series and others. So I’ll keep working on processing these materials, and of course I’ll keep updating this blog as work progresses. Keep in mind that I share images of cool stuff I find on Boatwright’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, too, so make sure you’re subscribed and following!

In Honored Memory of the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, August 16, 1929 – January 23, 2018

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The Reverend Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker with his wife, Theresa Ann Walker, 2017.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Today we mourn the passing of the Reverend Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker. Dr. Walker passed away Tuesday morning after a long and active life, surrounded by his family.

Various biographies of Dr. Walker are widely available, including the short, introductory biography I wrote in my first blog post. In the past day, major newspapers and other sources have published works honoring and remembering Dr. Walker, including the University of Richmond. However, it seems an appropriate time to discuss more of Dr. Walker’s life in detail particularly through the lens of the primary source material he and his wife, Theresa Ann Walker, generously donated to the University of Richmond in 2015.

While doing preliminary processing of Dr. Walker’s material, I have looked through much of the material he donated, discovering many different facets of Dr. Walker along the way. (This is one of the many reasons I’m so eager to process the collection and open it to researchers: the nuanced life and personality of Dr. Walker is amazing to discover, and I sincerely look forward to the research opportunities this collection will open up.)

My initial blog introduction to Dr. Walker did not mention the fact that he was a strong, outspoken activist for the anti-apartheid movement and served as an election monitor during the free election in South Africa. In fact, he was so well recognized within the movement that Nelson Mandela visited Dr. Walker and Canaan Baptist Church during his first visit as President of South Africa to the United States in 1994.

Dr. Walker’s music legacy is also far larger than previously mentioned. Beyond being a preeminent scholar and expert on black gospel music, Dr. Walker composed his own music in that musical tradition. He also revived the musical fervor at Canaan Baptist Church, eventually leading the church to produce multiple choral albums. Canaan Baptist continues to have a choral group named for their pastor emeritus, the Wyatt Tee Walker Inspirational Chorus.

Dr. Walker is recognized as a leading expert on the black gospel tradition not only in America, but also abroad. One of his many international trips brought him to Japan, where he interacted with the Kobe Mass Choir under the direction of Hisashi Kajiwara. Kajiwara later worked with the Kobe Mass Choir and the United Church of Christ in Japan to translate and publish Dr. Walker’s book Spirits that Dwell in Deep Woods in Japan. Kobe Mass Choir recorded an album of hymns Dr. Walker had selected or written that was published as a supplement to the book. (These materials are listed in the Boatwright catalog here.)

On a related note, Dr. Walker’s friends weren’t limited to world famous civil rights leaders and national leaders. One of the books donated alongside Dr. Walker’s papers is an autographed copy of Jackie Robinson’s Baseball Has Done It. In the inscription to Dr. Walker, Robinson states “it’s an honor to list you among my closest friends.” The catalog record for this volume, with the full inscription, is available here.

As previously mentioned, Dr. Walker’s work in Harlem went beyond his work as pastor of Canaan Baptist Church. For ten years, 1970-1980, Dr. Walker served as Special Assistant for Urban Affairs to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Dr. Walker was also the largest single developer of affordable housing in New York City, and the co-founder of the first charter school approved by the State University of New York, the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem.

In between all of these laudable achievements, Dr. Walker somehow found time to write and publish countless works. He has published over 30 books and countless essays in between weekly sermons. Many of his published books can be found in our catalog. Canaan Baptist Church also recorded many of his sermons, beginning in the early 1980s. These were donated as part of the collection and are currently undergoing preservation work before being opened to the public.

Alongside the numerous audio recordings of his sermons, Dr. Walker also donated a huge collection of personal slides. While some of these slides are images taken during Dr. Walker’s activism or work, including images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, the majority of these slides portray Dr. Walker’s personal life and travel.

In his spare time (between being Dr. King’s right hand man, the largest single developer of affordable housing in NYC, leading anti-apartheid efforts, and all of his work in churches both musically and pastorally), Dr. Walker seems to have greatly enjoyed traveling. While we have not processed all of these slides, locations pictured in the slides we have looked at include Israel, London, Spain, Jamaica, Tangiers, the Soviet Union, Haiti, Mexico, Aruba, Portugal, Egypt, China, and Cuba. There are also many slides of family gatherings and events, including a World’s Fair and baseball games. These slides date from as early as 1960 continue into the 1980s at least, showing a personal side of Dr. Walker that may never have been seen before. The two-part oral history Dr. and Mrs. Walker graciously agreed to as part of the collection is another unadulterated glimpse into the personality of this astounding man.

The Reverend Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker lived a life full of love, determination, and a strong sense of justice. While his life’s work may defy a simple description, everything he did seemed focused around these concepts. Now, as that life has drawn to a close, we wish to honor his memory not just for everything he has done but for who he was. While his many and varied accomplishments are well known, the person who was Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker is perhaps best discovered through the stories of his life and the personal collection he and his wife created. We anticipate opening the collection for research use after processing is completed by the fall of 2018. Working on the collection of such an accomplished and esteemed person makes me proud to be an archivist and to be preserving lives and stories like Dr. Walker’s. I am honored for the opportunity to do this work, as the University of Richmond is honored to help preserve his significant legacy.

The Friendship of Dr. Wyatt T. Walker and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Image of three photographs of Drs King and Walker

Left: Photo of Dr. Walker and Dr. King working together. Center: Photo of Dr. King at Birmingham Jail taken by Dr. Walker, 1967. Right: Photo of Dr. Walker at Birmingham Jail taken by Dr. King, 1967. Image taken from Let Wyatt handle this, University of Richmond Magazine.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) For this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday, in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day this past Monday, I want to focus on Walker and his relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I have processed some material connected to their relationship, and Wyatt’s general biography includes plenty of details about their friendship.

Walker and King first met in seminary in 1952. Although they attended different seminaries, they met through an inter-seminary organization called the Inter-Seminary Movement, hosted by Walker’s seminary, Virginia Union. King, who was the president of his student body at his seminary, Crozer, attended the organization that Walker, as president of the student body of his seminary, hosted. Afterwards, Walker was brought to King’s attention through much of the civil rights work he organized and enacted during his time in Petersburg, VA while he was pastor of Gillfield Baptist Church, including his work to desegregate diner counters and the public library. Walker also created the Petersburg Improvement Association during this time, an organization that used King’s Montgomery Improvement Association as a model.

In 1958, Walker would join King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In 1960, Walker left Gillfield and became King’s chief of staff – King would also take this opportunity to appoint Walker the first, full-time executive director of the SCLC, a post he would hold for 4 years. If you’ll recall last week’s post, it was during this time that Mrs. Walker, along with her husband, was jailed for 5 days as part of the Freedom Riders movement in Jackson, MS.

The late ‘50s and early ‘60s seem to be the time when Walker and King become nearly inseparable. Almost every photograph of King has Walker sitting or standing just behind or next to King, and Walker’s oral history confirms how closely they worked together. It was Walker who planned, coordinated, organized, and implemented the Birmingham Campaign, also known as Project C, a major series of protests in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that resulted in both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and King’s perhaps most famous written work, the Letter from Birmingham Jail. This letter, which Walker hails as “the most important document of the twentieth century,” was something Walker worked on personally. According to Walker, he was “the only one in Birmingham who could understand and translate Dr. King’s chicken scratch writing.” So as lawyers smuggled King’s writings out of the jail, it was Walker who translated the text – and when his exhausted secretary fell asleep at the typewriter during one late night translation session, it was Walker who finished typing the letter.

While it was Dr. King’s 1963 efforts in Birmingham that have remained in the public consciousness for the past 50+ years, it was his return in 1967, when he voluntarily turned himself in, that Dr. Walker accompanied him. Their time in the Birmingham Jail in 1967 was the only time Dr. Walker was imprisoned alongside Dr. King, and is when Walker took the photo of King sitting and looking through the bars, and Dr. King reciprocated by taking a photograph of Dr. Walker. Both pictures are shown above.

Throughout the remainder of King’s life, Walker was a nearly ever-present figure. After King’s assassination in 1968, Coretta Scott King requested that Walker plan the funeral and homegoing service. Walker, who was at that time newly installed as the pastor of Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, flew to Atlanta to plan, organize, and implement the service, including the famous march from Ebenezer to Morehouse. Walker would later recall this as both “one of the capstones of my organizational career” and “probably the saddest day of my life.”

Overall, it is obvious that Dr. Walker and Dr. King were very close. While Dr. Walker has many other accomplishments to his name, his work with Dr. King on the Civil Rights Movement is an important part of his legacy, and his close friendship with Dr. King is equally important to understanding both his legacy and his identity.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday post! As always, you can follow the library’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts to keep updated on what’s going on with the Walker Collection and other happenings around Boatwright. Check back here next week for another #WyattWalkerWednesday post, too! We’ll see you then.

Welcome Back, and the Papers of Theresa Ann Walker

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(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) Hello, and welcome back to Something Uncommon! I hope everybody had a nice Winter Break (and you weren’t too disappointed that we took some time off from the blog?). This week we’re back, and introducing our newest #WyattWalkerWednesday blog post! This week, we’re actually focusing on Mrs. Theresa Ann Walker, wife to Dr. Walker and activist in her own right.

One of the amazing things about the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt T. Walker Collection is the inclusion of some of Mrs. Walker’s material. While perhaps not as well known as her husband, Mrs. Walker was nonetheless heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement and participated in several major protests. In fact, Mrs. Walker was arrested as one of the Freedom Riders during a demonstration in Jackson, Mississippi in 1961.

Some of the material Mrs. Walker included in this collection relates directly to her time in the Jackson, MS jail. Included in that material is the tin cup that Mrs. Walker was given for the five days she was held. Mrs. Walker was also able to remember the layout of the cells she was held in, including the other Freedom Riders held with her and the placement of their cots. Mrs. Walker was kind enough to donate a copy of all her notes, including the layout of the cells and a detailed timeline of her imprisonment.

Handwritten notes detailing Mrs. Walker’s time in jail

Mrs. Walker was held from June 21 until June 26. Rev. Walker was also arrested and held in Jackson, along with 15 other Freedom Riders. This was a continuation of a larger demonstration by the Freedom Riders that began in May of 1961. For more information on the Freedom Riders and their part in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, you can always check out Boatwright’s online catalog or the appropriate Wikipedia pages.

For more information concerning the Walker Collection and my progress processing it, please keep an eye on this space! And as always, check out Boatwright’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts for even more glimpses behind the scenes while we prep the collection for use.