Cora Thomasina Walker (June 20, 1922 – July 13, 2006) was an influential Harlem lawyer and one of the first black women to practice law in the state of New York.
Her parents separated when she was an adolescent, and she, her mother, and her eight siblings dependent on public assistance.
When Walker graduated from James Monroe High School, she began to support her family with two jobs and at the same time enrolled in a six-year program at St. John's University in which students earned both a bachelor's and a law degree.
[3] As a black woman in the 1940s, she found it difficult to find work after she was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1947, so she started her own practice in Harlem, where she represented residents in the neighborhood until her retirement in 1999.
Beginning in 2005, The National Bar Association Commercial Law Section began giving out an award honoring Walker.