Spelman College

Esther Rolle was an American actress. She was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Florida Evans on the CBS television sitcom Maude and its... spin-off series Good Times. Esther Rolle was born in Pompano Beach, Florida, to Bahamian immigrants Jonathan Rolle and Elizabeth Rolle. Esther was the tenth of 18 children. Rolle attended Booker T. Washington High School in Miami, Florida and graduated from Blanche Ely High School. She initially studied at Spelman College in Atlanta, but she moved to New York City. She attended Hunter College, The New School for Social Research, and Yale University. She was also a member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority. For many years, Rolle worked in a traditional "day job" in New York City's garment district. She received the NAACP Chairman's Civil Rights Leadership Award in 1990. She was the first woman to receive this award. Her marriage ended in divorce, and she had no children. After residing in Los Angeles, California, Rolle died on November 17, 1998, aged 78, in Culver City, California, from complications of diabetes. Her body was flown back to her hometown, Pompano Beach, Florida.
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Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender. She is best known... for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. Her father, who was, in her words, "wonderful at math but a terrible farmer," earned only $300 a year from sharecropping and dairy farming. Her mother supplemented the family income by working as a maid. She worked 11 hours a day for USD $17 per week to help pay for Alice to attend college. Living under Jim Crow Laws, Walker's parents resisted landlords who expected the children of black sharecroppers to work the fields at a young age. A white plantation owner said to her that black people had “no need for education.” Minnie Lou Walker said, "You might have some black children somewhere, but they don’t live in this house. Don’t you ever come around here again talking about how my children don’t need to learn how to read and write.
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