Aside from being the building superintendent for the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Building, Willie Walker is also a man who serves the community beyond his means and doesn’t plan on stopping.
A veteran of the Civil Rights Movement who experienced the Jim Crow laws of the South, he attributes his upbringing as the fuel that energizes him today. Walker has been a resident of New York since 1965,but his roots lie in Birmingham, Ala. Living in the segregated South, he said that he learned a great deal about his own Black history and that everyone had a hand in raising him. “There’s a saying that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and that’s really true in Alabama,” he said. “The whole neighborhood raised a child. In Alabama, I learned how to be a man and I carried those lessons with me.” After the death of his mother at the age of 10,Walker said that he was forced to grow up fast. Being one of seven children and growing up during the Jim Crow era, he was faced with brutal racism and being separated from whites. “You couldn’t go into white-owned stores, restaurants served you in the back and oftentimes there were no restroom facilities that we could go into,” he said. “Blacks paid the same taxes as whites but while we had an open field, they had parks that look similar to today.
The experience still burns in my mind.” In the midst of an historical election with Black presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama inches from the White House, Walker recalls a time when Blacks were put through so much difficulty just to be able to cast a ballot. He witnessed his own father having to pay a poll tax, taking a literacy test and being told that his vote would not count. “Segregation taught me how not to hate and that if I work hard I can make change,” he said. In 1965, Walker attended one the greatest milestones in Black history. He was selected along with a group other boys by his pastor to participate on the March on Washington. It would be his first time outside of his native Alabama. While he was not close enough to see Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., he was able to hear King’s speech from where he was. “What we did in Alabama and in Washington made it possible for every person of color to be free,” he said. “We cared about each other and everyone was willing to help.” Today, Walker continues to leave an imprint on society. With no plans to retire soon from his day job as operator of the state office building, he volunteers 4-5 hours a day. He sits on various boards, including Mount Sinai Hospital, the Harlem Art Alliance and the Adam Clayton Powell Memorial Board. He currently lives in Harlem in the brownstone he bought in 1988 on Manhattan Avenue where he raised five daughters as a single parent after their mother died. He said, “My father used to always tell me that ‘you are just as good as those that think you’re not.’”