Margaret Abigail Walker

Margaret Abigail Walker (1915–1998) was an American poet and novelist. She was the first Black woman to win a national writing prize, the 1942 competition of the Yale Series of Younger Poets, for her poetry collection For My People; Walker’s 1966 novel, Jubilee, based on her great-grandmother’s life, tells the story of an enslaved family in the 19th century.

This print was commissioned by Dillard University in New Orleans, the hometownof theartist, shortly after Walker’s death. After spending three years in Japan studying printmaking, Smock, an Oberlin alumna, was an artist-in-residence at Dillard, teaching a course on advanced printmaking during the 1999–2000 academic year.