• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
Tom Joyner Foundation

Tom Joyner Foundation

  • Home
  • Scholarships
    • Hercules Scholarship
    • Al Joyner Memorial Scholarship
    • Annie Lee Memorial Scholarship
    • Find a Scholarship
  • Fantastic Voyage Cruise
  • About Us
    • Our Vision
    • TJF FAQs
    • TJF-Supported HBCUs
    • Contact Us
    • Our Partners
    • Board of Directors
    • Letter from the Chairman
  • News
    • 2018 Full Ride Finalists
    • News
    • Fantastic Voyage
    • Photo Galleries
    • Audio & Video
  • Donate

Wyatt Tee Walker, Virginia Union Alum and Civil Rights Leader Who Worked Beside MLK Jr., Dies

January 23, 2018 by ahouston

 

 The Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, who helped assemble the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous Letter From Birmingham Jail from notes the incarcerated King wrote on paper scraps and newspaper margins, has died.

He was either 88 or 89. Family records showed different years of birth, said his daughter, Patrice Walker Powell, who confirmed his death.

Powell said her father died Tuesday morning at an assisted living facility in Chester, Va.

Walker was brought in by King to be the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, three years after the civil rights organization was founded.

He already was a top civil rights leader in Virginia, where he had led a “Pilgrimage of Prayer” in Richmond against school segregation on New Year’s Day 1959. Both his parents attended Virginia Union University. His father, Rev. John Wise Walker was a student of the first graduating class of the University in 1899. Wyatt went on to graduate from Union with a bachelor’s degree in both Physics and Chemistry in 1950, graduating with honors.

Reader Interactions

Footer

Search Our Site

Donate

Copyright © 2021 · Kreativ Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in