Margaret Walker

Walker was part of the African-American literary movement in Chicago. Since she wrote poetry, I knew I wanted to base my poster on this concept by displaying a really powerful quote from a piece of her writing into an interesting stanza layout. I wanted to create a very simplistic and elegant layout, which relates back to the way that poetry is typically perceived, and I wanted this poster to seem like it was taken out of a book. I segmented a beautiful black and white portrait of her to disperse over the poster to represent her eyes, ears, and mouth because she sees, she hears, then she speaks — mainly through her writing. I used bold shapes in yellows and purples to compliment this idea of modernity and simplicity, but also represent the bold person she was. The featured quote is from her poem “For My People”. The bottom shapes begin to take on the shape of a flower and what’s more fitting than to place the quote “let a people loving freedom come to growth” at the base of the flower. Her birth year and death year are displayed on the top left and bottom right corners of the poster.

This poster was displayed in the Black Prairie Blues Museum in West Point, MS.