Not to be confused with the Walker College of Business at Appalachian State University.

Walker Business College, also known as Walker Business College for Colored,[1] and Walker's Commercial and Vocational College,[2] was a former business school and vocational school specifically for African Americans which was founded c. 1916 and closed c. 1967,[3][2] and located in Jacksonville, Duval County, Florida, and later Macon, Georgia.[2][4][3] The school advertised as, "the largest colored business college in the United States".[1]

History

Richard Wendell Walker was the co-founder and served as the school's first president.[3] Richard Wendell Walker was from Kansas and he had attended Fairmont University in Wichita, and Topeka Business College in Topeka, Kansas.[5] Julia Brown Walker, the spouse of Richard Wendell Walker, was a co-founder and also served as a secretary and president of the school.[6][7][2] Former NAACP president and civil rights activist, Johnnie H. Goodson taught tailoring classes at the school.[8]

Walker Business College offered both day and night classes.[3] The courses at Walker Business College included secretarial training, office machines, bookkeeping, accounting, and insurance.[6] The school also had a trade division and offered courses in upholstering, tailoring, dressmaking, and radio and television.[6]

The college was located at 417-Y2 Broad Street, and later moved to 9th Street and Myrtle Avenue in Jacksonville.[6] It later moved to 319 Broad Street, Jacksonville.[2] In 1929, the school opened a second location in Macon, Georgia.[5]

The Florida State Archives includes a photograph of students at the Walker Business College.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt (1920). "Walker Business College for Colored". The Crisis. 21–22. Crisis Publishing Company: 39. ISSN 0011-1422.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Walker's Commercial & Vocational College". The Crisis. 49 (1). The Crisis Publishing Company, Inc.: 12, 17–18, 27 January 16, 1942. ISSN 0011-1422 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ a b c d Richardson, Clement (June 16, 1919). The National Cyclopedia of the Colored Race. Issue 235 of Black Biographical Dictionaries, 1790–1950. Vol. 1. National Publishing Company. p. 473.
  4. ^ a b "Students at the Walker Vocational and Commercial College - Jacksonville, Florida". Florida Memory, Florida Department of State.
  5. ^ a b "Prof. Walker Opens Business College". Newspapers.com. The Macon News. May 26, 1929. p. 9. OCLC 8808946. Retrieved 2022-09-13.
  6. ^ a b c d "Spot Light on Dr. Julia Walker Brown at the Ritz Theatre and Museum". Free Press of Jacksonville. November 18, 2015.
  7. ^ Patterson, Homer L. (June 16, 1904). Patterson's American Education. Vol. 59. Educational Directories – via Google Books.
  8. ^ "To Johnnie H. Goodson". The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, Stanford University. 2016-06-01. Retrieved 2022-09-13.