Happy Birthday, Mrs. Walker! Richmond area residents took time recently to remember pioneering Richmond businesswoman Maggie L. Walker in honor of what would have been her 157th birthday on July 15. While she is best known as the first Black woman to found and serve as president of a bank in the United States, she also was a civil rights and voting rights advocate, newspaper publisher, store owner and politician and all around community leader. Mrs. Walker was a founding member of the Richmond Branch NAACP; helped lead a boycott of the racially segregated Richmond trolley system; was the first Black woman to run for statewide office in 1921 in seeking to become state superintendent of public education; and was grand secretary of the Order of St. Luke, leading the fraternal society in opening a department store, producing a newspaper and creating the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank.
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Happy Birthday, Mrs. Walker!
Richmond area residents took time recently to remember pioneering Richmond businesswoman Maggie L. Walker in honor of what would have been her 157th birthday on July 15.
