Now I have seen everything.

Alice Walker, born 1944, is a contemporary Pulitzer Prize-winning writer best known for her novel, The Color Purple which was adapted into a film and musical.

“One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Flannery O'Connor and Alice Walker are both from Georgia; a generation apart, their birthplaces are only a few miles apart. O'Connor, an only child, came from a privileged family while Walker was the youngest of eight children was born to a father who earned $300/year as a sharecropping farmer.

This is the church Alice attended down the road from her home. The red sign in front is an appeal to save the building.

No parking around here in Alice's old neighborhood; I just pulled off the road when I finally located the area.

"Living under Jim Crow laws, Walker's parents resisted landlords who expected the children of black sharecroppers to work the fields at a young age. A white plantation owner said to her mother that black people had 'no need for education." Minnie Lou Walker said . . . Don't you ever come around here again talking about how my children don't need to learn how to read and write." Her mother enrolled Alice in school at the age of four.

In 1952 Walker was accidentally wounded in the right eye. Because the family had no car her parents could not immediately take her to a hospital for treatment. By the time they reached a doctor a week later she had become permanently blind in that eye.

Later Alice became valedictorian of her senior class and attended Spelman College in Atlanta on a full scholarship.

When Alice left for college, her mother gave her a suitcase, a sewing machine and a typewriter. Minnie Walker told her daughter the suitcase was for independence, the sewing machine for self-sufficiency and the typewriter was for creativity.

All of the marked sites for Alice Walker are within about a mile along Wards Chapel Road outside of Eatonton, Georgia. The family graveyard is along the road also.

There is only a marker near the spot where Alice grew up.
It was moving to experience evidence of this accomplished writer's humble beginnings.

Walker's works primarily focus on family, community, culture and strength.