As a child he moved with his family to Providence, Rhode Island, where he was graduated from Classical High School in 1945 and received a bachelor's degree from Brown University in 1951.
He worked as a disc jockey on Providence radio station WICE before attending the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism where he received a master's degree in 1954.
He then returned to radio for the Voice of America (VOA), first in Washington, D.C., as producer-host of Report to Africa (1959–1962) and then in New York City as principal United Nations correspondent (1962–1967).
He has contributed articles to numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, The New Republic, Saturday Review, Cosmopolitan, and Playboy.
[4] He served on the union's negotiating committee, agreeing an initial contract with the college and Rhode Island Board of Governors for Higher Education, which was ratified in October 2009.
In the 1996 presidential election in Rhode Island he was temporarily a stand-in candidate for Ralph Nader's official running mate Winona LaDuke.
He served as president of Amos House,[10] which is the state's largest soup kitchen, and on the boards of a number of non-profit and social service organizations, including the George Wiley Center (advocates for the poor), the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless, and the Slater Mill Historic Site.
[1][3] Every year for his own birthday from 1988 to 2011, Walton hosted a substantial charitable fundraiser at his home that was typically attended by several hundred people, including sitting and former governors, senators, congressional representatives, and media personalities who were in some cases his former students.
[14] In 2008 at the age of 80, Walton was profiled and interviewed as part of a major feature article in The Providence Phoenix about prominent people in Rhode Island.