(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) While much of our #WyattWalkerWednesday posts have focused either on Dr. Walker’s civil rights work or his lesser known activities, we haven’t done much to highlight his work at Canaan Baptist Church of Christ and the Harlem community. This week, we take a look at one of the most well known photographs of Dr. Walker and the impact that moment had on his life.

Dr. Walker was well known in Harlem, NYC, and New York State for many different reasons. He co-founded the first charter school in the state, he worked with Governor Rockefeller for a decade, he was a major proponent and developer of affordable housing in the community, and his church choir won major awards under his leadership. But Dr. Walker’s passionate sermons and the connections he drew between his religion and the world around him was perhaps most inspiring and noteworthy. He was certainly not afraid to draw concrete links between biblical topics and current events. And he was not afraid to address the general public directly about these events.

One of his most famous sermons was held not in Canaan Baptist Church of Christ itself, but on top of a car in the streets of Harlem. Dr. Walker delivered this sermon through a bull horn, standing on the trunk of a car with one leg on the roof of the cab. The car was parked outside a pizza parlor infamously known as the front for a local drug ring run by the mob in Harlem. The New York Times had a presence in the crowd around Dr. Walker as he gave this sermon, and their photograph of the event is perhaps one of the best known photos of Dr. Walker to date (a copy of which is included in the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection here at the University and can be seen hanging in the Rare Book Room Annex).

Photograph of Dr. Walker preaching through a bullhorn atop a car in Harlem, NYC.

This sermon, delivered on April 5, 1970, focused on the community’s love for their children. Dr. Walker preached in front of a mafia-run drug front, convincing parents to steer their children away from such places and to bring them instead to the church and leadership of Christ. In his oral history recorded for the University of Richmond, Dr. Walker attributes the management of the “recreational unit” to Frank Lucas, the gangster portrayed by Denzel Washington in American Gangster. In fact, Dr. Walker said that Lucas put a hit out on Dr. Walker after that sermon — one of two hits he had on his life. (The other he attributes to black nationalists who were upset that Dr. Walker planned a state office building in Harlem.)

This story shows yet another aspect of the renowned Dr. Walker, one that is perhaps well known but overshadowed nonetheless by his work in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Walker cared deeply for his church and his religion but also for his community. He showed this care in many different ways, including much of the development work he did throughout his life. He developed housing and education opportunities for the community, but he also did his best to protect them from those who would lead them into lives of addiction and violence.

(Note: This post was authored by Taylor McNeilly, Processing & Reference Archivist.) There are many different tasks included in archival processing, many of which non-archives professionals may not really think about at all. Of course there’s the organization, the foldering, the putting everything into boxes. But one of the most interesting parts of processing a collection for me is coming across evidence of the donor’s cultural legacy and getting to research that legacy. I’d like to take this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday to explore one such remnant of cultural impact from the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection: a play put on about Dr. Walker and his civil rights work in Virginia.

The “Ready*y For Right: A Petersburg Story” program with Sycamore Rouge insert.

Included in the collection is a program for the play “Read*y for Right: A Petersburg Story.” Without a page of copyright information like you’d find in a book, it can be hard to place something like this geographically or chronologically. Luckily, the theater staging this production was large enough (and modern enough) to have had an online presence, which makes placing it geographically pretty easy — turns out it was in nearby Petersburg. (You might have guessed that from the title, but archivists like to confirm that anyway.) Their online presence also shows that they are unfortunately closed, which cuts off one obvious avenue for questions. This makes placing it chronologically take a little more work.

To figure out when this play was put on, the easiest thing to do is search the program itself for context clues. We can tell by the style and quality of printing that it was most likely in the 21st century, but what can we tell from the information printed? What companies are placing ads? Do any of those have dates on them? It turns out one advertisement lists an event happening on “Saturday, October 25.” So let’s check to see what years October 25th fell on a Saturday and use those as a starting point. 2003, 2008, and 2014 are the most recent years that had a Saturday, October 25th. Since the theater, Sycamore Rouge, seems to have closed in 2013, we know it has to be earlier than that — so not 2014. Their online presence, some of which is still available, only dates back to 2011 or so, which doesn’t help us eliminate either 2008 or 2003 as possibilities.

Next, let’s look at some of the information given in the main text of the program. The message from the director doesn’t mention which season they’re in, and the timeline for her tenure is a bit vague. Looking at the list of actors and their biographies, however, we discover that the actor who played Dr. Walker is performing the role as his first with this company. Can we dig up any information about him?

While there’s plenty of information about this actor’s more recent roles (it seems he moved to Washington, DC), there’s not much to help in dating the show. What else can we find in the program to help us? And that’s when we hit gold! The Lighting Designer and Scenic Designer’s bios both mention work done in 2007, meaning this program must have been printed in ’07 or later. This, combined with the advertisement for “Saturday, October 25,” must mean that the show was put on in 2008. And to confirm this, the last page is a listing of Sycamore Rouge’s 2008-2009 season’s remaining shows, starting with December. On its own, this listing can’t confirm much, but combined with the information we picked up as we looked through the program, we know it must be 2008.

You can see how much work a single item in an archival collection may need, but this information is very helpful to archival staff in understanding the connections between the different items in the collection, as well as their connections to the donor. This can help us better serve researchers by providing access to materials we know are connected that the researcher may not be aware of when first coming in. And the information is also very helpful for researchers who come to use the collection, so we try our best to figure out as much as we can to help them along.

That’s it for this week’s #WyattWalkerWednesday post. As always, I’ll be back with a new glimpse into the processing of the collection next week. And in the meantime, feel free to follow the library’s Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts for more updates from around Boatwright.