Margaret Walker’s acclaimed novel Jubilee will be the focus of the Welty House and Garden’s second Virtual Book Club #weltyathome beginning Tuesday, August 11. The class will be held from 12 noon until 1:00 p.m. CST for three consecutive Tuesdays. The Zoom class discussion will be led by Dr. Robert Luckett, associate professor of history, civil rights historian, and director of the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center at Jackson State University. The program is made possible with support from the Mississippi Humanities Council.
For more information about the book club, visit Welty at Home | A Virtual Book Club or email info@eudoraweltyhouse.com. Here is the full schedule: Week 1 August 11 – Part I. Sis Hetta’s Child — The Ante-Bellum Years; Week 2 August 18 – Part II. “Mine eyes have seen the Glory” — The Civil War Years; Week 3 August 25 – Part III. “Forty years in the wilderness” — Reconstruction and Reaction.
Jubilee is the story of Vyry, who was the child of an enslaved woman and the owner of the plantation is Georgia where she was born. The moving story is based on the life of Walker’s great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown, and is a family history researched for more than 30 years by Walker and published in 1966.
Walker was a noted author and poet and a beloved English professor at Jackson State University, who taught under her married name, Dr. Margaret Walker Alexander. She founded the Institute for the Study, History, Life, and Culture of Black People, who the Margaret Walker Alexander National Research Center. Director Luckett is pictured here at the dedication of the Margaret Walker marker on the Mississippi Writers Trail.
Welty and Walker were admirers of each other’s work. This photograph was taken at the Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts in 1992 when Walker received an award from Gov. Kirk Fordice and Welty attended.