Shelia Walker was born on July 27, 1948, in Hot Springs, Garland County, Arkansas. At the age of seven, she moved to Chicago, Illinois.
Walker attended Wilson Junior College before graduating from Loyola University in 1970 with a B.S. in sociology. She joined the US Army Reserves in 1974, where she spent eight years as a radiology technician. Walker also served as a US Federal Law Enforcement officer in New York City. In 1988 Walker began working for the Onondaga County Health Department Cancer Services Program in New York state as a community healthcare educator.
Walker has been an activist since high school, when she joined the Student Nonviolence Coordination Committee in Chicago and began to participate in marches, sit-ins, and boycotts during the civil rights movement.
Walker is descended from victims of the Elaine Massacre of 1919.
Walker passed away on March 29, 2021.
#1: Still frame from Pryor Center video interview with Sheila L. Walker, conducted by J. Chester Johnson; Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2019
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#2: Still frame from Pryor Center video interview with Sheila L. Walker, conducted by J. Chester Johnson; Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2019
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
#3: Still frame from Pryor Center video interview with Sheila L. Walker, conducted by J. Chester Johnson; Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2019
© Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, University of Arkansas
