The photograph shows author Alice Walker being arrested and taken into custody during a protest in Concord, California in the 1980s, against weapons shipments being sent to Central and South America. Her shirt “Remember Port Chicago,” refers to an explosion during World War II that killed mostly black sailors, which occurred while the sailors were loading munitions.
Born the youngest of eight children, Alice Walker was raised by parents who believed in the power of education, despite being a family of black sharecroppers in the South. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 1956, she moved back to the South, where she became actively involved in the Mississippi civil rights movement, putting her interest in writing on hold.
Her writing career was rejuvenated when she became an editor for Ms. magazine. While she had mainly focused on writing poetry and short stories, her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, was published in 1970. Her most famous novel, The Color Purple, was published in 1982. Focusing on the struggles of being a black woman in the 1930s South, the novel was critically acclaimed and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book would also be adapted into a film and musical. Following the success of her novel, she also published The Temple of My Familiar (1989) and Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992).
Walker continues to write works that articulate the struggles of black people in society. She has also persisted with her political activism, with her most recent cause being a push towards a resolution in the war-torn Gaza Strip. “My activism—cultural, political, spiritual—is rooted in my love of nature and my delight in human beings."