A Right Worthy Grand Mission: Maggie Lena Walker and the Quest for Black Economic Empowerment.A Right Worthy Grand Mission: Maggie Lena Walker and the Quest for Verb 1. quest for - go in search of or hunt for; "pursue a hobby" quest after, go after, pursue look for, search, seek - try to locate or discover, or try to establish the existence of; "The police are searching for clues"; "They are searching for the Black Economic Empowerment Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) is a program launched by the South African government to redress the inequalities of Apartheid by giving previously disadvantaged groups (black Africans, Coloureds and Indians) economic opportunities previously not available to them. by Gertrude Woodruff Marlowe Howard University Press Howard University Press is a publisher that is part of Howard University. External link
abbr. International Standard Book Number ISBN International Standard Book Number ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m 0-882-58211-9 If ever there was ever a subject crying out "remember me" it is Maggie Lena Walker. Unfortunately, this is not the biography Walker deserves. Walker, born to an ex-slave mother and white father, became one of this nation's wealthiest self made women and the first to charter a bank. All this, as the walls of Jim Crow went up and the hopes of former slaves came tumbling down. How could a biographer not note the irony of May 18, 1896--charter date of the organization Walker would later lead to her renown, the Right Worthy Grand Council of the Independent Order of the Sons and Daughters of St. Luke? That same day, the Supreme Court handed down its infamous Plessy v. Ferguson Plessy v. Ferguson, case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated but equal railroad carriages, ruling that the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth amendment to the U.S. decision, a transportation case, that legalized "separate but equal" segregation. Segregated travel certainly affected this woman who built her organization blazing trails south to north. Similar forces would lead her peer-pioneer and near-namesake, Mme. C. J. Walker--America's first self-made woman millionaire--to lease a private railroad car The private railroad car or private railway coach was a privately owned passenger car that would be added to the make-up of a train for the ultra-rich of the nineteenth century to ride in splendid upholstered privacy. and purchase her own automobile. Marlowe offers a portrait with no backdrop. The author gives Mme. Walker's contemporaneous life only one line. This lapse is telling. In two paragraphs, the woman born Maggie Lena Mitchell goes flora public-school teacher to Mrs. Armstead Walker Jr., suffering the loss of her second child. Historic forces that should reveal character and the magnitude of Walker's against-the-odds achievement are chronicled in a dry, introductory tome. By any measure, Maggie Lena Walker was a giant in her day and remains a legend in ours. She deserves tribute, and we deserve to know how she made her mark that future generations might follow her lead to the greater good. --Reviewed by Janus Adams Janus Adams is author of Sister Days: 365 Inspired Moments in African American History African American history is the portion of American history that specifically discusses the African American or Black American ethnic group in the United States. Most African Americans are the descendants of African slaves held in the United States from 1619 to 1865. (John Wiley & Sons, November 2000) and publisher of BackPax children's media. |
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