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Wise child: Wise woman. The story of Annie Mae McClary Walker
Abstract
The life of Dr. Annie Mae McClary Walker is a microcosm of Black History in the United States. The only half Native American-half African American anthropologist in the world, Dr. Walker provides rare insight into the racist culture of her childhood on the Seminole reservation and in the tortuous existence of the Florida turpentine camp, into the emotionally-charged educational climate that she changed for America's black students, the bombings and death threats that were part of the black civil rights movement, and the cultures of the African nations she observed and studied. Because of her beliefs about the strong role of all women, Mae Walker addresses two fundamental goals of feminist research: (1) the rediscovery of lost role models, and (2) the reassessment of the roles and contributions of women in society, especially in the black communities in America and Africa since the 1920s. Her own mentors and friends included Eleanor Roosevelt, black educator Mary McLeod Bethune, novelists Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Miller, and Maya Angelou, playwright Arthur Miller, and civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Walker became a member of Yoruba royalty in Nigeria, studied Muslims in Tanzania, pioneered Head Start in the United States, and created one of the nation's first African-American studies university programs.
Subject Area
Rhetoric|Composition|Black history|Biographies|Education history|Womens studies
Recommended Citation
Hawkins, Lynn McClary, "Wise child: Wise woman. The story of Annie Mae McClary Walker" (1998). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9838593.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9838593