Margaret Walker was a poet from Birmingham Alabama. She started writing poetry when she began college at the age of 15, and she earned a BA from Northwestern University in 1935; she then earned an MA from the University of Iowa in 1940. She was a faculty member at Jackson State College before returning to the University of Iowa to earn and receive her Ph.D. in 1965.
Walker was the first African American to earn the Yale Younger Poets Prize, in 1941, for her collection For My People (1942). She also published the collections Prophets for a New Day (1970) and October Journey (1973)
Information from Poets.org.