Biography

He was a major figure in civil rights as Martin Luther King Jr.'s chief of staff and later advocate for affordable housing in New York.

In 1964, he moved to New York, where he ran a publishing business specializing in books for African Americans, and became an assistant pastor at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. In 1967, he became pastor of the Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, which became his church home until his retirement in 2004. He was also an authority on black church music and wrote several books on the subject.

In 1967, he and King participated in a demonstration in Birmingham, where they were both arrested and jailed for five days. Walker sneaked a small camera into jail, taped to his leg. He took a photo of King, deep in thought while looking through the bars of their cell; it became one of the most famous images of the civil rights leader.

He was a minister and civil rights leader who was a top assistant to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He helped organize the Freedom Rides, an effort to end segregation on interstate bus travel in the Deep South. In 1961, during one of the first trips of the Freedom Riders, he and his wife were among dozens of participants jailed in Jackson, Mississippi. He was a leading planner of the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

He grew up in Merchantville, New Jersey, where his father was a minister. He graduated from Virginia Union University in Richmond, where he studied chemistry and physics, and also received a master of divinity degree. He earned a doctorate from Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York.