She was once called the nation’s oldest student.
Mary Walker, born a slave in Union Springs, Alabama, kept a leather-bound Bible she received on the occasion of her first son’s birth until her death in 1969 at 121 years old.
The Bible’s inscription proves her age, she said, but she couldn’t read it or the Scripture inside until she took a literacy class at a Chattanooga senior home, later named for her, at the ripe age of 116.
A cabin on Wilcox Boulevard, modeled after Walker’s description of the slave cabin where she lived until age 15 when the Emancipation Proclamation came down, was torn down this month.
In its place, the Mary Walker Historical & Educational Foundation plans to build a new plantation-style house. The foundation plans to house a Black history library and exhibits about local history, including Walker’s story and Chattanooga’s connection to Black soldiers in the Civil War, foundation leaders said.