The Colors of Alice Walker

Alice graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1965 and returned to Georgia. She registered voters door-to-door during the summer. In the fall of 1965, Alice returned to New York and worked in the welfare office. But the struggle in the South beckoned her back and, in the summer of 1966, Alice was once again doing door-to-door voter registration among the rural poor of Georgia.

Here she met and fell in love with a Jewish law student named Mel Leventhal. Alice accompanied Mel back to New York City while he finished law school. After he graduated, the two married and moved to Mississippi. Although they endured threats of physical violence because of their interracial marriage, the couple thrived. Alice worked as a black history teacher for the local Head Start while her husband work on many cases for the NAACP. Alice also became pregnant again and delighted in the fact that her pregnancy would keep her husband from the Viet Nam draft.

The happiness of Alice’s unborn child and her marriage ended abruptly on April 4, 1968. Alice learned that her hero, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been struck down by an assassin’s bullet. Alice attended the funeral services in Atlanta. After returning home, she found it hard to contain such a deep grief. The emotional trauma Alice suffered after losing her hero caused her to miscarry her child.

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