Wyatt Tee Walker (August 16, 1928 – January 23, 2018) was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian.
Walker sat at the feet of his mentor, BG Crawley, who was a Baptist Minister in Brooklyn, NY and New York State Judge.
Walker started as pastor at historic Gillfield Baptist Church in Petersburg, Virginia, where he entered the Civil Rights Movement.
In his leadership for social justice and against segregation, he was arrested numerous times, the first for leading an African-American group into the "white" library in Petersburg.
His "flamboyant" and cheeky style was shown as he "caused a stir" by trying to "check out Douglas Southall Freeman's admiring biography of Robert E.
[citation needed] Walker's led two major civil rights organizations in Virginia: he served as president for five years of the Petersburg branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and as state director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which he co-founded in 1958.
[2][7] Walker spent the next two years building the organization in Virginia by capitalizing on his network of relationships with clergy throughout the state from his activities with NAACP and CORE.
[8] A strong manager, Walker (assisted by Dorothy Cotton and James Wood brought from the PIA) improved administration and fundraising, and coordinated the staff's far-ranging activities.
[7] He was also the chief strategist and tactician for "Project C", the detailed plan for confrontation with local police and city officials that was the heart of the first phase of the Birmingham Campaign in 1963.
[9] The events captured important national media attention and coverage, as Walker discussed in detail when interviewed by Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?.
In 1967 Walker was called as senior pastor of the influential Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, New York, where he commanded a major pulpit in the struggle for tolerance and social justice.
During the years in which Africans sought independence, Walker hosted numerous leaders from the continent, including Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who were active in struggles against colonialism and apartheid.
In 1988, during the height of the anti-apartheid struggle Walker helped co-found the Religious Action Network (RAN) of the ACOA, together with Canon Frederick B. Williams of the Church of the Intercession in Harlem.
In 1989, Walker and the Canaan Baptist Church teamed up with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development to sponsor a $7 million, 63,000-square-foot, 80-unit senior living facility on Frederick Douglass Boulevard in Harlem.
Because of Walker's leading role in the Civil Rights Movement, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library collected his papers from the period of 1963–1982.
The founding and history of Sisulu-Walker was described in the book "A Light Shines In Harlem" by Mary Bounds, which won the Phillis Wheatly Prize for best non-fiction work in 2015.