Maggie Lena Walker

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. I've had Maggie Lena Walker on my episode shortlist for really a long time now, so when her name came up just in passing in our recent episode on Olivia Ward Bush Banks, it seemed like a good time to move her up to the top of that list. As we said in that earlier episode, Maggie Lena Walker was the first black woman in the United States to charter a bank. She was also the first black woman in the US to serve as a bank's president. But the bank was just one of her many, many endeavors. A lot of her life's work was described in the language of the time as race work. This is work that was undertaken by black people for other black people to try to dismantled the effects of racism and oppression and to collectively improve the lives of the whole black community. Some elements of this would go on to be professionalized in the field of social work, which is also something that came up a little bit in that episode on Olivia Ward Bush Banks. As a note up front, in this episode, we are going to be talking about a number of tragedies that Walker experienced in her life, and that includes an accidental shooting death that took place within her immediate family. And the early part of this episode also includes a discussion of sexual consent, and that's in the context of Walker's mother and biological father. Maggie Lena Walker was born Maggie Lena Draper on June fifteenth, but there are contradictory reports about what year in her adult life she often gave. Her birth year is eighteen sixty seven, a couple of years after the end of the U. S Civil War, but various diary entries, family papers, and census records suggests that she may have been born as early as eighteen sixty four, before the end of the Civil War, when her birthplace of Richmond, Virginia, was the capital of the Confederacy. Maggie's mother, Elizabeth Draper, was probably enslaved from birth, but by the time Maggie was born, she was a free, paid cook's assistant in the home of unionist and abolitionist Elizabeth van lew. Elizabeth Draper gave birth to Maggie on the Van Low estate. If that happened in eighteen sixty four, when the Civil War was still going on, then Van Lou was at the time running a massive and successful spy network for the Union. That's something that was covered in our most recent Saturday Classic on one of that network, spies, Mary Elizabeth Bowser. Maggie's biological father was Eccles Cuthbert, who was born in Ireland and in the words of an obituary, he immigrated to the US quote while a mere lad. He ended up in South care Lina, where he joined the militia before the start of the Civil War. Eccles became injured or ill while stationed in Richmond and was reassigned from the infantry to working as a clerk at a convalescent hospital there. It is possible that he visited or even boarded at the Van Lou estate. So Maggie being the daughter of a free black woman and a Confederate soldier isn't the kind of detail that we can just drop into the episode without some more context, because it brings up immediate and obvious questions about whether this was or even could have been consensual. And then this is compounded by the fact that we don't know Elizabeth's birth year for sure. If Maggie was born in eighteen sixty four, then Eccles would have been twenty two at the time, but historians put Elizabeth's age at that point as anywhere between fourteen and nineteen. One end of that spectrum obviously horrifying, and the other like a twenty two year old and a nineteen year old still would beats pretty typical in a lot of contexts today. Another complication here is that many modern descriptions of this repeat unsubstantiated details. Some describe Ecol's Cuthbert as an abolitionist, sometimes specifying but he became an abolitionist after meeting Elizabeth van lou But accounts that make this claim don't cite any sources for it, And there are also write ups on Maggie Lena Walker's life that note that Elizabeth Draper and Eccles would have been legally prohibited from marrying, but there's no documentation that suggests that they ever wanted to. Yes, some of this really comes across to me almost as an effort to like romanticize or sanitize something that we just don't have the details on. We also don't have a clear sense of what Maggie's or her mother's feelings were about this during their lifetimes. After the war, Eccles became a widely known newspaper correspondent, and in her adult life, Maggie wrote an account where she described him as quote a writer who was writing and making history. Directly after the close of the war. When Maggie gave birth to her first son, she named him Russell Eccles Talmudge Walker, which doesn't really suggest that Eccles Cuthbert was a painful memory for the family. There's also some suggestion that Eccles left Maggie some money when he died in nineteen o two, and that Maggie used that money to help fund her endeavors. And then in the late nineteen twenties, Maggie seems to have provided some biographical detail to the publication Who's Who in Colored America that actually named Eccles Cuthbert as her father. At the same time, Eccles does not seem to have had much involvement in Elizabeth Draper's or Maggie's lives beyond that he reportedly offered to pay for Maggie to be educated in Baltimore, but if he made that offer, there is no evidence that it was accepted. There is also an account in a diary that Maggie kept as an adult, which is repeated in family lore, that ecl sent her a dress when she graduated from high school, and that her mother threw that dress into the stove. Yes, so there's a lot here that is vague and contradictory and could be interpreted in a number of ways. Regardless though, of how Elizabeth Draper and her daughter Maggie each viewed this, their lives would have been very difficult during Maggie's earliest year, since her mother was a young single mom working as a domestic but then, on May eighteen sixty eight, Elizabeth Draper married William Mitchell, that was Elizabeth Van Lew's butler. They got married at First African Baptist Church in Richmond. After this, William raised Maggie as his own daughter. In eighteen seventy, William and Elizabeth had a son named Johnny. William eventually got a job as a waiter or possibly as head waiter, at the St. Charles Hotel, which at the time was the most prominent hotel in Richmond. He was making enough money that the family was able to move off of the Van Loo property and to a small home of their own on what was known as College Alley, which was close to the hotel and to their church. But this period of relative prosperity for the family did not last for very long. In February of eight seventy six, William's body was found in the James River after he had been missing for about five days. His death was ruled a suicide, but Elizabeth Draper Mitchell was convinced that he had been murdered, possibly in the course of a robbery. So once again Elizabeth was a single parent, and there was really only one job available to her as a black woman that would have allowed her to stay home with her children, and that was to take in laundry. In the South, until the development of washing machines and the establishment of commercial laundry businesses, this work was overwhelmingly done by black women who were working from their homes. Doing laundry by hand was incredibly demanding, It was time consuming, and it could also be dangerous since it involved working with things like boiling water, lie soap, and irons that would have been heated in a fire. The combination of difficult, dangerous work, long hours, and low wages was part of laundry work all over the South, and this is what led to laundry workers in Atlanta forming a union and going on strike in eighteen eighty one. So the Atlanta Washerwoman's Strike took place eleven years after Maggie's stepfather died. When that happened, Maggie would have been somewhere between nine and twelve years old. She was attending the public schools for black children that had been recently established in Richmond, and she started helping her mother with this home laundry business in addition to going to school. Later on, she would say quote, I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, but with a laundry basket practically on my head. Maggie attended three public schools between about eighteen seventy two and eighteen eighty three. The first, known as Old Lancastrian School, had originally been a school run by Quakers for white children, but it had been renovated and reopened as a school for black children in eighteen seventy one. From there, she went to Navy Hill School, which was the only school in Richmond that had a black faculty, although the school still had a white principle. She finished her education at Richmond Colored Normal School. It was while she was attending the Normal School that Maggie joined an organization that would play an enormous role in the rest of her life, and she would play an enormous role in it. That was the Independent Order of St. Luke. We'll talk more about that after a sponsor break. The Independent Order of St. Luke started out in Baltimore in eighteen sixty seven as a secret society that was founded by Mary Prout. It followed in the footsteps of Mutual Aid Society I das that had been established before the Civil War. These had to be secret because of laws that banned black people from congregating. This grew into a fraternal organization that provided support and care when its members were sick and at the end of their lives, including paying for people's burials. So it was part service organization, part insurance plan. People paid a fee to join. They paid regular dues, and then benefits were paid out if they became sick or disabled or upon their death. After some internal divisions, the Richmond organization split off in eighteen seventy seven under the leadership of William Forrester. When Maggie Lena Mitchell became a member in eighteen eighty one, it was as part of the Good Idea Council Number sixteen of the Independent Order of the Sons and Daughters of St. Luke's. At that point, she was a student at the Richmond Colored Normal School. She was initially supposed to graduate from that school in eighteen eighty two, but the school board added a requirement for students to study Latin, French or German, so Maggie's entire graduating class was delayed by a year because none of them had had that instruction. Along with other socioeconomic factors, that meant that no one graduated from the school in eighteen eighty two, and then only ten students did in eighteen eighty three. Plans for the eighteen eighty three commencement ceremony may have been one of Maggie's first experiences with organized protests. It seems likely that she was involved, but it's not concretely documented. Graduation for Richmond's white public school students was held at the Richmond Theater, but ceremonies for black students were held at one of the city's black churches. Students from the Normal Schools eighteen eighty three graduating class wanted to have the same graduation ceremony that the white students got. Students convinced the city's black churches to tell the school board that their facilities were not available for commencement that year. Maggie's classmate, Wendell P. Dabney, who would go on to at a biography of her in, wrote a letter stating that the black children's parents paid the same taxes as the white children's parents did, so they should have access to the same taxpayer funded graduation at the Richmond Theater. The Richmond Theater agreed to allow black students at the graduation ceremony, but only if the seating was segregated with the black students in the balcony. This, of course, was not acceptable to the students. In the end, commencement was held at the assembly hall at the Normal School, which just wasn't big enough for the event, so the school had to limit how many friends and family members students could bring. This is one of the earliest protests against segregation in public schools in the United States. After graduating, Maggie Lena Mitchell taught public school for three years. This included the only year during this era that there were any Black principles in Richmond's public schools. They were hired in the wake of reforms that had been in instituted by the Readjuster Party, which was formed and took control of the Virginia Legislature during this period, and then the black principles that had been hired were fired a year later after the Democratic Party went a majority. Instead, married women were not permitted to teach, so Maggie left her job after marrying Armstead Walker Jr. On September fourteenth, eighty six. Armstead worked in his family's brick masonry and construction business, and they had met at a Sunday school program at First African Baptist Church. They went on to have three children, Russell Eccles tow Mudge Walker on December nine, eight nine, Armstead Mitchell Walker on July eighte and Melvin DeWitt Walker on August tenth, eight Sadly, the younger Armstead Walker died when he was just about seven months old, and Maggie's half brother, Johnny died just a few months after that. On April twenty three, eight four, Maggie seems to have throw herself into her work after these losses. Really throughout her life, both her faith and her works tended to be huge sources of comfort to her after things like this happened. She had been rising through the leadership of the Independent Order of St Luke, and around this time she started working to establish a juvenile department, which would emphasize values like thrift and responsibility and young people, and also provide life insurance for children. It was also during these years that one of Armstead's relatives, Polly Anderson, also came to live with the Walkers. She's described in family records as a foster or adopted daughter, and it's clear that she was considered to be a member of the family, but at some points she also earned a salary for her work in the household. In eight nine, after thirteen years with the organization, Walker was elected right worthy Grand Secretary of the Independent Order of St Luke, which was its highest role. In spite of Walker's work to make changes and to start the juvenile Department, the organization was really struggling. It had a little more than a thousand adult members and only thirty one dollars in change in the treasury, but it had at least four hundred dollars in outstanding bills. William Forrester, who had led the Order since breaking away from the organization in Baltimore, had refused to continue leading it, maintaining that the organization was dying, but Walker had plans to turn the Order around. In her words, her quote first work was to draw around me women. The first executive Board elections after she took on the role were held in nineteen o one, and six of the nine elected board members were women. Walker was a charismatic, powerful, and incredibly effective speaker, and on August twenty, nineteen o one, she gave a speech at the Order's annual convention in which she announced a plan specifically to improve the lives of black women. In a speech, she said, quote, who is so circumscribed and himmed in in the race of life, in the struggle for bread, meat, and clothing as the Negro woman? They are even being denied the work of teaching Negro children. Can't this great order in which there are so many good women, willing women, hard working women, noble women, whose money is here, whose interest is here, whose hearts and souls are here do something towards giving to those who have made it what it is. She laid out a plan that would she hoped to become self sustaining. The order would start a newspaper, a bank, a department store, and factories which would make clothing that could be sold in the store. Although the plan to open factories did not come to fruition. The St. Luke Harold began publishing in nineteen o two, with Walker acting as managing editor. This was followed by the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in en three with Walker as president. Then the St. Luke Imporium opened in nive. Each of these ventures had multiple purposes. A big one for all of them was to provide jobs. The jobs that were available to black people in Richmond overwhelmingly involved manual labor, a lot of it degrading or dangerous. But the newspaper would employ black writers, editors, photographers, printers, The bank would employ black cashiers, and the department store would employ black clerks, stock workers, sales staff, and the like. At the same time, the St. Luke Harold would keep subscribers informed of St. Luke's business, along with local news, civil rights issues, and what was happening at the bank and the emporium. It would cover the suffrage movement as it related to black women, as well as lynchings and crimes against black people that the white press was not covering. It would be, in Walker's words, quote, a trumpet to sound the orders, so that the st Luke upon the mountaintop and the st Luke dwelling by the side of the sea can hear the same order, keep step to the same music, march in unison to the same command, although miles and Miles intervene. The Penny Savings Bank would, in Walker's words quote, take the nickels and turn them into dollars. It would provide services that black people were excluded from at the all white banks, including loans and mortgages. That would also encourage people to save their money, no matter how little money they had to start with. The bank was funded by the purchase of shares, with the Order of St. Luke purchasing two hundred shares and account holders encouraged to buy at least one share at a cost of ten dollars, which could be paid for in ten monthly installments. The bank also distributed physical banks for people to keep at home, to encourage people, especially children, to save up their change until they could make a deposit. Although this was not the only black owned bank in Richmond, it was the first to be run primarily by women. Although when the bank first opened the only experienced Black cashier that Walker could find was a man, over time it had account holders all over the Southeast, thanks in part to Walkers extensive travels to spread the word about the bank, and the emporium provided a place for black people to shop without the discrimination or harassment that they generally faced at white owned stores, which forced black customers to use a separate entrance, barred them from eating at lunch counters, and refused to allow them to try on clothing and hats. The emporium also prioritized black owned suppliers, keeping the money that was spent there within the black community. As Walker said in a speech in nineteen o six, quote by black, every time you set foot in a white man's store, you were making the lion of prejudice stronger and stronger. As all of this was going on, which is a lot for one person to home. In four Walker bought a new home on East Lee Street in the Richmond neighborhood known as Jackson Ward, which was nicknamed the Harlem of the South. The Walkers moved in after about a year of upgrades and renovations, including converting the gas lighting to electric and adding indoor plumbing, complete with a bidat in the upstairs bathroom. Over the years, the Walkers added on to this home as the family grew larger, with Russell and Melvin getting married and living in the house with their wives and their children. Polly Anderson lived with them as well, eventually marrying Maurice Payne and moving with him to an apartment over the garage. Maggie's mother, Elizabeth, who started working as a midwife during this same period, lived in the home as well. As the years went on, this home was increasingly busy and bustling, and it was always exquisitely decorated. I will say that Maggie Lena Walker herself was also always exquisitely dressed. Every single picture of her she looks amazing. Yes, yes, she uh knew how to wear a garment for sure, and to pick like beautiful clothes. And she carried herself in all of these pictures like she has a very distinctive posture in all of them. Anyway, She obviously was a woman who cared very much about her appearance and looking good and having a household that looked and felt beautiful. Holding the top post at the Independent Order of St. Luke and starting a newspaper and chartering a bank and establishing a department store is a lot, as Holly said earlier, but that was not all she was doing. In nineteen o four, Walker helped organize a boycott of the Virginia Passenger and Power Company. In April of that year, Virginia had passed a law allowing street car companies to decide whether to segregate their cars, and the Virginia Passenger and Power Company had announced that it would be segregating. Richmond's black community. Boycotted the street cars for about two years, and the company went out of business in nineteen o six. In nineteen o seven, Walker became a founding member of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. In nineteen o eight, she donated five hundred dollars to the National Training School for Women and Girls in Washington, d c. Under the condition that her friend, Nanny Helen Burrows, who was raising money for the school, did not say where the money came from. Although Burrows technically didn't, she did use the money to build a dormitory that was named Maggie L. Walker Hall. In nineteen ten, the St. Luke Penny Saver Bank became a separate entity from the Independent Order of St. Luke. This followed the passage of a new law that prohibited secret orders from running banks, and it also followed an embezzlement scandal at a different bank run by a different organization, the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers that was another fraternal society. This scandal combined with a number of large loan defaults to put the True Reformers Bank into receivership, and that Order never really everard. We mentioned earlier that St. Luke paid out disability and death benefits much like an insurance company, and in the nineteen teens it started to face more and more insurance regulations. Often people had joined St. Luke and similar organizations when they were relatively young, and then the organizations had invested or otherwise used the dues that they collected in various enterprises which may or may not have been financially successful. This led to questions and concerns about what would happen is more and more members got older and died, especially when the organization that was paying out death benefits also ran the bank or many of its members deposited their money. Walker and the rest of the leadership at the Independent Order of St. Luke wanted their operations to be above board and to comply with these newly introduced regulations in both banking and insurance, and as far as the bank went, these efforts were successful. In nineteen eleven, the bank successfully made it through a thorough investigation. As the nineteen teams progressed, the Order itself continually made adjustments to its insurance programs to keep them in compliance with these evolving regulations. But the St. Luke Emporium was not as successful. Throughout its existence, it had faced retaliation from white business owners, including the formation of an all White Retail Dealers Association, which was established to drive black owned stores out of business. This included spreading the word among wholesalers that the association would boycott anyone who sold products through black owned stores. The emporium also faced reluctance from black shoppers, who feared retaliation if they didn't keep shopping at white owned stores, or who couldn't afford to pay a higher price that often came along with shopping at a smaller business. So in nineteen eleven, the emporium closed. Wendell P. Dabney described it as closing quote in defeat but not disgrace. Walker kept taking on new leadership role, including becoming president of the Richmond Council of Colored Women, which was founded in nineteen twelve. But in nineteen fifteen, the Walker family experienced a horrific tragedy, and we're going to talk about that after we first take a sponsor break. We noted at the top of the show that there was an accidental shooting in Maggie Lena Walker's immediate family that happened on June nineteen fifteen, after her son Russell mistook her husband Armstead his father for a burglar. Walker called this an indescribable tragedy and the most trying ordeal of her life. A crew had been working on the roof of the Walker family home, and on June nineteenth, they had left a ladder propped against the back of the house. Some of the Walkers had been worried that someone might use the ladder to break into the house, especially since the warm weather met the upstairs windows were open. That night, some of the Walkers thought they heard an intruder on the roof and called the police, but the police found nothing. The family was still concerned on the so Armstead borrowed a gun from a family friend and put it in his bedroom drawer. That night, a child who lived across the street came to the Walker house to say that his mother had seen someone on their roof. Armstead and Russell both went to investigate, with Russell getting the gun from his father's drawer. When Russell saw a man on the porch, he fired one shot, then returned to the living room and told his mother, I got him. Maggie replied, got who, to which Russell had answered the man he's on the back porch. When Russell, Maggie, and Polly all went out to the porch, they discovered Armstead's body. The whole family was, of course horrified, traumatized, and completely grief stricken. Rumors started to spread almost immediately that this shooting had not been an accident. It. Walker was criticized for calling a doctor and an attorney immediately after the shooting, but not calling the police, and then by the time the police arrived at the Walker home it was described as swarmed with thousands of people. A coroner's inquest found that Armstead had been killed by a pistol shot that his son, Russell, had fired, but the coroner's jury said it could not determine quote whether the shooting was done knowingly and maliciously, or was owing to the son's mistaking his father for a robber, just in case people are wondering. Russell was in his early twenties at this point. A police court hearing followed and the judge dismissed the case for lack of evidence. But during the hearing, a prosecutor asked Maggie Lena Walker, quote, didn't you say at the time of the shooting, Russell, I told you not to do it. Walker answered no, she did not. I'm not sure where exactly this question came from, but it led people to speculate that mag and Russell had conspired to kill Armstead for the insurance money. Even though the justice at the police court hearing had dismissed the case, rumors and suspicion about it continued, and ultimately the case was brought before a grand jury which indicted Russell for murder. Russell was held for about five months before the trial started. The Independent Order of St Luke held its annual convention during that time, and Maggie faced calls to step down, with her critics arguing that the organization should cut ties with anyone who was connected to such a scandal. Then the Sunday before the trial began, Maggie was walking to church with a friend when a car nearly backed into them, and Maggie sprained her ankle while trying to get out of the way. This added to the ongoing issues from a previous injury that she had sustained in nineteen o eight when she broke her kneecap in a fall. At trial, witnesses for the prosecution testified that they had heard or seen Russell having alter kations with his father. The defense rested in part on the idea that Maggie's position in the community meant that she had powerful enemies, and that these allegations were rooted in people feeling envious of and threatened by her. In the end, Russell was acquitted, but he clearly carried a lot of guilt and shame about all this for the rest of his life. After her son had been acquitted, Maggie Lena Walker successfully sued the Standard Accident Insurance Company after it refused to pay Armstead's life insurance claim, citing that same conspiracy theory. From there, she renewed her focus on her work. In nineteen seventeen, she co founded Richmond's chapter of the Double A CP and organized the collection of relief supplies for World War One through St. Luke. When the flu pandemic started in nineteen eighteen, she met with the governor and got him to authorize an emergency hospital. Her work on charity and relief efforts continued throughout the pandemic and the First World War. In nineteen nineteen and the wake of racist violence that became known as Red Summer, which we've covered on the show before, Walker was part of an interracial commission that was established to try to prevent that violence. In nineteen twenty, after the nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution went into effect, she led efforts to try to register black women to vote. That year. When the Republican Party ran an all white ticket in Virginia, which was nicknamed the Lily White Ticket, Walker ran for Superintendent of Public Instruction as part of a competing Lily Black ticket that was of course made of all black candidates. None of those candidates on that ticket were elected, though. Walker's mother, Elizabeth, died on February twelve, and her son, Russell, died on November twenty three after struggling with alcohol misuse, and depression since the death of his father. In addition to her profound grief, Walker was also experiencing progressive pain and weakness in her legs. She started using leg braces. It's not entirely clear whether this stemmed from her earlier injuries or if it was a complication of diabetes, which she had developed as well. An illness in compounded these issues, and after that point she used a wheelchair. After she started using a wheelchair, Walker had her home renovated to make it more accessible. These renovations were managed by Charles Russell, who was the first black architect to be licensed in Virginia, and they included the installation of an elevator. Walker used a standard wheelchair of the time when she was out in public, but at home she had a custom built cushioned chair on wheels that had a removable foot rest. And a desk attachment. She also purchased a car that was customized to be wheelchair accessible and she hired a driver for it. Walker was obviously an incredibly hard worker throughout her life, but she also did take vacations, including two places like Hot Springs that offered her some relief for her leg pain. In nineteen twenty five, Walker was awarded an honorary master's degree from Virginia Union University, and two years later many of the organizations she had been involved with and otherwise supported declared October to be Maggie Walker months. By the mid nineteen twenties, the Penny Saving Bank had more than fifty thousand account holders, but in nineteen twenty nine, that's the Great Depression was approaching, it was clear that business was slowing down. Between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen thirty one, it merged with two other similarly struggling black owned banks in Richmond. Those were Second Street Savings Bank and Commercial Bank and Trust. They formed the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company. Unlike many many other banks, this bank survived the Great Depression, as did the St. Luke Harold, although it did have to drop from weekly to monthly circulation. In nineteen thirty, Walker went to Florida at the request of Mary McLoud Betune to talk about establishing a national organization. That organization was the National Council of Negro Women, which Bethune established five years later. Walker did not live to see the start of this organization do She died of complications from diabetes on December fifteenth, nineteen thirty four, at the age of about seventy. Polly Anderson Payne had really looked after her and her last years, and Walker's reported last words were quote, have faith, have hope, have courage, and carry on. Her funeral at First African Baptist Church was enormous, with Richmond Public Schools observing a half day, a processional of thousands of people, and an honor guard made up of Boy Scouts and young people from St. Luke and the Street Lamps and Jackson Ward draped in black. Walker had continued to act as the right Worthy Grand Secretary of the Independent Order of St. Luke until the end of her life, and the time that she was in that role, it had grown from one thousand eighty members to a hundred thousand members in twenty four states, and from a Treasury that had a little more than thirty one dollars in it to having more than a hundred thousand dollars in reserve. The Independent Order of St. Luke continued as an organization until the nineteen eighties. In nineteen seventy nine, the National Park Service bought the Walker Home at one hundred ten and a half East Lee Street, now the Walker Historic Home at Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site. The Consolidated Bank and Trust Company was the oldest black owned bank to be in continual operation in the United States. Then in two thousand five, it was sold to Abigail Adams National Bank Corps. Inc. It remained its own business in that structure until two thousand nine, when the Abigail Adams Corporation was sold to Premier National Bankorps Incorporated of Huntington, West Virginia. Premier eventually consolidated the Bank and Trust Company into its other operations. In eleven, a statue you of Maggie NA. Walker was erected in Richmond, and PayPal established an award named in her honor, which recognizes quote achievements of underrepresented women who are economically empowering their communities and creating a more inclusive world, and that is Maggie Na Walker, so good, so incredible. How much work one person did. I mean, she obviously had a whole organization and people who reported to her monumental achievements that had far reaching implications for her entire community. Yeah, do you have a listener mail? I do. This note came via Instagram. It is from Mallory. Instagram is not usually a place where I see things and they get retained in my mind. But I was so charmed by this, and Mallory just said, listening to your first Autumn Unearthed episode and your head stone fudge story reminded me of this post. And Mallory had shared a post from Instagram that was about a tombstone containing a fudge recipe. This apparently went virals some time ago. I totally missed it. I have no recollection of it at all until getting this message from Mallory. The basic story here, though, is that Katherine Andrews, who went by K, passed away back in at the age of ninety seven, and she wanted the whole world to have her fudge recipe, so it is inscribed on her gravestone. If you want to get this recipe, and make some fudge with it. You can find it on various news outlets by googling Kay's Fudge Tombstone or something similar like that. Um. It was initially inscribed with a typo in it, though it called for a tablespoon of vanilla extract instead of spoon. I mean that's a lot. It's well and as a person who who really loves vanilla extract, the issue was the texture of the fudge that it created did not set up properly, not the amount of vanilla flavor that it conveyed. So thank you so much Mallory for sharing this. I had totally never seen it until now, and now I kind of want to go make some fudge. Although the fudge recipe that has been used in my family is not one that involves putting it on a marble slab, I don't think now. I wish I had looked that up before I came in here. UM. Anyway, thank you Mallory for sharing that. If you would like to send us an email where history podcast that I Heart radio dot com. If you send us a message on Instagram, we might see it. We might not. It's a little weird. No shade for Mallory for having sent the message that way. That was That was a post that was shared through Instagram. We are all over social media. I miss in History, which is where you'll find our Instagram as well as our Facebook and our Twitter. And you can subscribe to our show on iHeart radio app or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.