Mary Walker

Walker's story turns on a night class. In 1963 she enrolled in the Chattanooga Area Literacy Movement, where volunteer Helen Kelly taught her to read, write, add and subtract in one-hour sessions two nights a week for over a year. Honors followed: the key to the city, two terms as Chattanooga's Ambassador of Goodwill, and certification by the federal government as the nation's oldest student. Accounts of her age do not quite agree, since an 1848 birth would make her about 115 in 1963. A 2020 picture book, The Oldest Student, retells her story.

What the plaque says

Mary Walker Born a slave in Union Springs, Alabama, "Grandma" Walker moved to Chattanooga in 1917 and remained here until her death. At the age of 116 she enrolled in Chattanooga Area Literacy Movement class and learned to read, write, and solve arithmetic problems. She twice received Chattanooga's Ambassador of Goodwill award and was declared the oldest student in the nation by the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 3.6 mi
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.
• Walnut Street Bridge — 3.7 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 3.9 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.
• Ross's Landing — 4.2 mi
  The Tennessee River landing where Chattanooga began and where Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee people were put on boats and ferried out in 1837 and 1838.

More markers nearby

• Roland Hayes — 1.3 mi
• The McCallie School — 1.6 mi
• Tennessee Valley Railroad and Museum — 2.5 mi
• Joe Engel — 2.5 mi