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The Colors of Alice Walker

© Megan Drummond

Alice Malsenior Walker was born on February 9, 1944. She was the eighth and youngest child of Minnie and Willie, poor sharecroppers from Eatonton, Georgia. Although the family was poor in the monetary sense, they were rich in spirit, love and culture.

In the summer of 1952, when Alice was just eight years old, she was blinded in her right eye by a BB gun pellet while playing cowboys-and-Indians with her brothers. Alice was extremely self-conscious of the white scar tissue that was left in her eye. When she was 14, her older brother had the scar tissue removed by a doctor in Boston. Although the ugly white scar tissue was gone, Alice’s vision never returned.

After being named senior prom queen, Alice graduated as valedictorian of her class in 1961. In the fall of that year, Alice left home to attend Spelman College in Atlanta on a scholarship. While at Spelman, Alice became active in the civil rights movement. She was invited to the home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the end of her freshman year in recognition of her invitation to attend the Youth World Peace Festival in Helsinki.

After traveling throughout Europe and taking part in the August 1963 March on Washington, Alice returned to Spelman for her junior year. When she returned, Alice learned that she had received a scholarship to attend Sarah Lawrence in New York. Alice did not want to leave the civil rights movement. Her teachers at Spelman finally persuaded Alice to become one of a handful of African-American students at the prestigious university.

After her junior year, Alice again got the opportunity to travel, this time to Africa and Europe. Traveling broadened Alice’s mind and her happiness. Her happiness faded away upon returning to school, where she learned she was pregnant. Scared of what she would tell her parents and unsure of what to do, Alice considered committing suicide. She slept with a razor blade under her pillow for weeks and she wrote volumes of poetry, trying to sort out her feelings.

With the help of a friend, Alice was able to obtain a safe abortion. She wrote the aptly tiled short story “To Hell With Dying” while she was recovering from the stress and anxiety of the procedure. Alice’s mentor at Sarah Lawrence, poet Muriel Ruykeyser, sent the story to publishers and to poet Langston Hughes. The story was published and Alice received a handwritten note from Hughes. She was just 21 years old.

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