UR Releases Oral History of Civil Rights Leader Wyatt Tee Walker

The University of Richmond Boatwright Memorial Library has released an oral history of prominent civil rights leader Wyatt Tee Walker. 

The oral history, conducted in 2016 with Walker and his wife, is the first publicly available piece of the Wyatt Tee Walker Collection.

Walker, who served as chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., gifted the University of Richmond his personal collection. Boatwright Memorial Library is processing and cataloguing the collection the hundreds of historical pieces, including papers, photos, and recorded sermons.

A fall 2018 symposium on Walker’s legacy provided a sneak peek of several items in the collection, but this oral history is the first material made available for public use.

“This is particularly poignant as we believe the oral history was Dr. Walker’s final recorded interview before his passing,” said Taylor McNeilly, the processing and reference archivist who works closely with the Walker Collection.

The oral history, plus transcripts and video recordings of the interviews, are available at this link.

The library plans to release additional pieces of the Walker Collection in the coming weeks, including a group of eight cassettes recording mass meetings held during the Birmingham campaign in 1963. Further portions of the collection will be available for use later this year.

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