The historic emergence of intersectional leadership: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of St. Luke

Abstract

Maggie Lena Walker arose from humble beginnings as the daughter of an ex-slave to become a prominent banker, entrepreneur, and community leader in the American state of Virginia in the early 1900s. She was the first African American woman in the United States to establish and lead a bank. In addition, Walker played a principal leadership role in a major African American mutual aid social service organization: the Independent Order of St. Luke. In this article, we investigate the historic emergence of intersectional leadership by exploring Walker’s leader identity development as Grand Secretary-Treasurer of the Independent Order of St. Luke. The method that we apply to the Walker case is intersectional microhistory, which is the study of unique social actors and the intersections of their gender, race, and other social categories as they change over time. We use our intersectional microhistory approach to unpack phenomenon of emerging intersectional leadership, offering deeper insights about the oppressive and multi-layered barriers that Maggie Walker surmounted as a black woman in order to effectively function as an acknowledged leader of the Independent Order of St. Luke.

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