SOURCE: Berke, Nancy. “The Girl Who Went to Chicago: Political Culture and Migration in Margaret Walker's For My People.” In Women Poets on the Left: Lola Ridge, Genevieve Taggard, Margaret Walker, pp. 123-56. Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 2001.

In the following chapter from her book on three poets, Berke deconstructs the text of For My People, suggesting that the themes of black northward migration and the economic and social conditions of the 1930s are important to an understanding of Walker's work.

This is my century— Black synthesis of time: The freudian slip The Marxian mind Kierkegaardian Leap of Faith and DuBois prophecy: the color line. These are the comrades of Einstein, the dawning of another Age, new symphony of Time. 

—Margaret Walker, “This Is My Century,” 1983

Looking back over fifty years of writing poetry from the vantage point of a black woman, Margaret Walker paradoxically names her...