The Open Road Blog

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, ...

Our Archival Photo of the Week features award-winning author, Virginia Hamilton performing at a club in New York City in the mid-1950s. Born in 1934, Hamilton grew up among a large extended family in Ohio. She excelled as a student and attended Ohio State University to study literature and creative writing. She later moved to New York City in order to publish her fiction. In between jobs, she took additional writing courses at the New School for Social Research and continued to meet fellow writers, including her husband, poet Arnold Adoff. In 1967, Hamilton published her first novel, Zeely, ...