Rites held in Georgia for Minnie G. Walker, mother of 'Color Purple' author - Alice Walker - Obituary - Brief Article

Jet, Oct 18, 1993

Services were held recently in Eatonton, Ga., for Minnie Grant Walker, 80, mother of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, who died of cardiac arrest at the Eatonton Health Care Center.

Walker, a homemaker, also helped her husband Willie in sharecropping and dairy farming. A native of Putnam County, Ga., Mrs. Walker was known as a masterful story teller who told tales to three generations of youngsters. Her youngest daughter, Alice, obviously benefitted from the stories she heard at her mother's knee, going on to win the to literary honor for her work The Color Purple, which was also made into a blockbuster movie.

Walker was predeceased by her husband in 1973. In addition to her daughter Alice, Mrs. Walker is survived by two other daughters, Ruth Walker Hood and Mamie Lee; five sons, William, James, Curtis, Willie and Robert; a brother, Thomas Grant; four sisters, Malsenia Harris, Ruth Lane, Mildred Skilman and Nettie McCrary; 30 grandchildren, 27 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren.