Rebecca Walker
Considered one of the most audible voices of the young women’s movement,
Rebecca Walker was named by Time magazine as one of the fifty future leaders
of America. Born in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi, she grew up in San Francisco
and New York and graduated cum laude from Yale University in 1992. Following
graduation, Rebecca founded Third Wave Direct Action Corporation, a national
non-profit organization devoted to young women’s leadership and
activism. In its First Summer, Third Wave initiated a historic emergency
youth drive, which registered over 20,000 new voters in inner cities across
the United States. In 1998, she co-founded the Third Wave foundation,
the only national, activist, philanthropic organization for young women
between the ages of 15 and 30.
Rebecca also expresses her activism and concerns about issues such as
race, gender, sexuality, and domestic violence in her writing. She has
been a contributing editor to Ms. magazine since 1989. She has been published
in Essence, SPIN, Harper’s, VIBE, and various women’s and
black studies anthologies. In addition, she edited the anthology To be
Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, which has become
a standard text for women’s studies courses throughout the nation.
Her first book Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
is an intimate portrait of growing up biracial in a racially divided world.
Her newest anthology, What Makes A Man, brings together the diverse and
rich voices of men and how they struggle with masculinity,
Rebecca has hosted a television forum on inner city teen violence, pregnancy
and drug abuse, and has produced segments for young adult programming
focused on youth activism. She is the recipient of the Paz Y Justicia
award from the Vanguard foundation and speaks at colleges and conferences
throughout the United States and Canada on issues such as Third Wave feminism
and multi-racial identity.
Rebecca Walker will be on campus at 7pm on April 7th, 2005 at Roussel Performance Hall. We are co-sponsoring
her visit with Xavier University where she will participate in a faculty/student
luncheon.