Wyatt Tee Walker

Wyatt Tee Walker was born on the sixteenth of August 1928 at Brockton, Massachusetts, the son of John Wise Walker — a Baptist minister of the Brockton Mount Calvary Baptist Church — and Maude Pinn Walker, a homemaker. He was raised in the New England Methodist-and-Baptist parsonage Black-Brockton household of his father across the closing decade of the inter-war period.

He was placed at six at the principal Brockton Public Schools and at the Brockton Worcester Polytechnic Institute preparatory programme of the closing years of the war period. He completed the bachelor of science in chemistry and physics at the Virginia Union University at Richmond in 1950 — among the closing-period Virginia-Union-University Black-Baptist-Methodist closing-period closing-period closing-period graduates — and the bachelor of divinity at the Virginia Union School of Theology at Richmond in 1953.

He was ordained a Baptist minister at the closing months of 1953 and was named in 1953 the principal Gillfield Baptist Church at Petersburg, Virginia. He pastored the Gillfield Baptist Church from 1953 to 1960 and was the principal closing-period Petersburg-NAACP-and-Petersburg-Improvement-Association senior pastor of the closing months of the principal post-1953 Petersburg-civil-rights closing-period programmes.

He was the principal closing-period Petersburg-1960-NAACP-and-Petersburg-Improvement-Association senior pastor at the principal post-1954 Petersburg-public-library-desegregation closing-period programmes of the closing months of 1954 and 1955 — at the principal post-Brown-v.-Board-of-Education closing-period Petersburg-public-library Black-Methodist-Baptist closing-period programmes of the closing months of 1955.

He was named in 1960 by Martin Luther King Jr. (placed in this archive) the principal executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the closing-period SCLC Atlanta headquarters at the closing months of 1960. He held the SCLC executive directorship for four years through to 1964 — across the principal years of the SCLC closing-period American civil-rights direct-action campaigns of the closing years of the 1960 to 1964 period.

He was the principal organisational architect of the principal SCLC Birmingham Campaign of April and May 1963 — at the principal post-1963 closing-period Birmingham-Public-Safety Bull Connor closing-period programmes. The Walker organisational plan — called Project C, for Confrontation — was the principal SCLC organisational programme that produced the principal closing-period Birmingham-Children’s-Crusade closing-period programmes of the closing months of May 1963 and the principal post-1963 Civil-Rights-Act of 1964 closing-period programmes.

He drafted in 1963 the principal closing-period Birmingham-Jail open letter of Martin Luther King Jr. — the principal manuscript-transcription-and-editorial-coordinate of the closing-period King-Birmingham-Jail letter of the closing months of April 1963 — at the principal closing-period closing-period Birmingham-Jail closing-period programmes.

He resigned the SCLC executive directorship in October 1964 to pastor the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ at Harlem, New York City — the principal Harlem post-1964 Black-Baptist-Methodist closing-period pastorate of the closing years of the post-1964 American civil-rights closing-period programmes. He served the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ from 1967 to 2004.

He died at Chester, Virginia on the twenty-third of January 2018 of complications of natural causes, at eighty-nine.

He is honored here as the architect of the Birmingham Campaign.