“June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.”

Alice Walker is an American writer and activist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. She gained prominence for her novel *The Color Purple*, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 and became a landmark in Black women’s literature. Her work spans poetry, essays, and activism, particularly on issues of racial and gender justice.