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Creator
Walker, Charles D., 1903-
Call number
Sc MIRS Walker 1988-41
Physical description
20 audio_recordings
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Charles D. Walker audio collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library
Sponsor
An anonymous donor funded preliminary processing for this collection. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supported a research library-wide grant for the digitization, and funded the Schomburg for the description and production of the finding aid as part of The Next Century of Black Studies Project.
Repository
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
Access to materials
Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.Restrictions apply

The Reverend Charles D. Walker (December 7, 1903 - February 16, 1989) was a pastor and civic leader in Milford, Connecticut. The collection consists of twenty audio recordings, including oral history interviews with Walker, dating from 1986 to 1987.

Biographical/historical information

The Reverend Charles D. Walker (December 7, 1903 - February 16, 1989) was a pastor and civic leader in Milford, Connecticut.

Walker was born in 1903 in Triboro, North Carolina, and raised by an uncle in Hampton, Virginia. He worked and traveled in Virginia and North Carolina before finding work as a butler and cook for William H. Wheelock, a Black businessman. In 1922, Wheelock charged Walker with managing his residential holdings in Harlem, New York. During the Great Depression, Walker traveled throughout Maryland and Massachusetts before settling in the area of New Haven and Milford, Connecticut, in the late 1940s to work for a machinery manufacturer.

Walker was a member of the Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church until 1958. In 1961, he became the pastor of Milford's First Baptist Church, while working as a personnel manager for the Hunt Pierce Corporation from 1961 to 1978.

As a minister, Walker advocated for civil rights in Milford. He campaigned against racial discrimination at banks and in housing, issued a "Call to Conscience and Action" in solidarity with the 1963 March on Washington, and, in 1976, led a successful state-wide effort to commemorate Connecticut's African American participants in the Revolutionary War. He served as a treasurer for the Milford Council on Aging, as a vice-chairman for the Red Cross, and as a board member at the United Way of Milford.

Walker retired in 1980 and passed away in 1989.

Scope and arrangement

The collection consists of twenty audio recordings. They are arranged chronologically. The original format of the audio recordings was cassette, with many items containing two parts. Square brackets indicate partial information or unclear spelling.

The bulk of the collection is comprised of seventeen oral history interviews with Charles D. Walker dating from 1986 to 1987, as well as a workshop on prayer that he delivered in 1986. One audio recording is an oral history interview with a teacher based in New Haven, Connecticut.

The collection's oral history interviews were conducted by an interlocutor who identified herself as Ann Robinson. She is likely Ann Garrett Robinson, a professor at Gateway Community College and a public historian of Black life in New Haven.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Charles D. Walker, 1988.

Processing information

Collection inventoried by Nathan Evans. Collection processed and described by Lyric Benjamin-Hunter, archivist. Finding aid published in 2025.

Separated material

See the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division for the Charles D. Walker papers, Sc MG 375.

See the Photographs and Prints Division for the Charles D. Walker photograph collection., Sc Photo Charles D. Walker Collection.

Using the collection

Location

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division
515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Third Floor

Access to materials

Appointment preferred: Request an in-person research appointment.

Access restrictions

At the time of publishing, one audio recording is not available pending digitization.