Frances Ola Walker, cofounder of Parents Against Drugs and lifelong community activist, has died at 86
For more than 70 years, she protested injustice, improved life for her neighbors, and cared for historic residential swaths of West Philadelphia.
Frances Ola Walker, 86, of Philadelphia, cofounder of Parents Against Drugs and Dunlap Community Citizens Concerned, onetime president of the Mill Creek Coalition and director of the West Philadelphia Empowerment Zone, former aide to U.S. Rep. William H. Gray III, college instructor, mentor, and volunteer, died Tuesday, Dec. 30, of respiratory illness at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania-Cedar Avenue.
A lifelong champion of education, civil rights, comprehensive healthcare, environmental responsibility, employment and housing equity, and community partnerships, Ms. Walker spent more than 70 years, from age 13 to 86, protesting injustice, improving life for her neighbors, and caring for historic residential swaths of West Philadelphia.
In the 1960s, she marched with fellow activist Cecil B. Moore and others to protest segregation at Girard College. Most recently, she advocated for alternative SEPTA transit routes to support Black-owned businesses.
“I just stayed involved,” she said in a video interview for the West Philadelphia Landscape Project. “If there was a protest, I was leading it. … I’m glad I made a contribution people can respect.”
She cofounded Dunlap Community Citizens Concerned in the early 1980s to address housing and infrastructure concerns, and Parents Against Drugs in the late ‘80s. She led the local Healthy Start federal initiative to reduce infant mortality in the 1990s and served on the advisory board of Bridging the Gaps, a healthcare partnership of academic health institutions and community groups.
She developed programs that connected University of Pennsylvania students and faculty with neighborhood residents through what is now Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships. She acquired federal funds to revitalize communities in the West Philadelphia Empowerment Zone, partnered with Penn to pioneer urban ecology projects, and supervised the West Philadelphia Landscape Project in the Mill Creek neighborhood.
Her family said she was “fearless in her pursuit of justice.”
Anne Whiston Spirn, professor of landscape architecture and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, invited Ms. Walker to lecture virtually in her ecological urbanism course. “She bridged the worlds of university, politics, and neighborhood, and called the powerful to account,” Spirn said.
She served on then-Mayor Ed Rendell’s search committee for a new health commissioner in 1993 and briefly considered her own run for City Council. She worked with then-Vice President Al Gore on his community empowerment programs and managed Gray’s West Philadelphia office for 10 years in the 1980s.
Former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah noted her “extraordinary legacy of helping others” and said: “She always chartered her own path and spoke her truth.” Former City Council member at large Blondell Reynolds Brown said: “Her unwavering grassroots work brought care, dignity, and possibility to families facing hardships.”
She studied community engagement in MIT’s Mel King Community Fellows Program in 2000 and 2001, and earned more than 100 awards, citations, and commendations, including from the White House for her leadership in a children’s immunization campaign.
She was on the advisory board at Power 99 FM radio and quoted often in The Inquirer and Daily News. Her achievements were noted in two books, They Carried Us: The Social Impact of Philadelphia’s Black Women Leaders and The Lex Street Massacre.
“My grandmother didn’t leave us directions,” said her grandson, Abdul-Malik Walker, “but she left us a compass. Her voice is in our habits, and her strength is in how we handle the miles ahead.”
Frances Ola Walker was born Jan. 20, 1939, in South Philadelphia. Her father was a preacher, and the family is related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So it surprised no one when she began leading academic tutoring for her siblings and teen neighborhood friends on her front stoop.
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She was one of 11 children, and her family moved to the Dunlap section of West Philadelphia in 1945. She attended West Philadelphia High School and worked at first as a personal shopper for neighborhood seniors.
She was always interested in civic affairs and social justice, and she became the first Black woman to work at an Acme markets warehouse, her family said, and one of the first female postal carriers.
She had sons Gregory and James, and daughters Michelle, Roslyn, Wala, and Patricia. She married John Ponnie. Her husband, sons Gregory and James, and daughters Michelle and Patricia died earlier.
Ms. Walker enjoyed traveling and playing cards with her family. She knew the detailed history of Dunlap and Mill Creek, and delighted in sharing it with others she encountered on her frequent walks.
“She was an encourager to people of all ages,” said her niece Sibrena Stowe. “She was truly a force to be reckoned with.”
Ms. Walker told her family: “It is through love that all things are possible. For me, it is when people call on you that lets you know you make a difference.”
In addition to her daughters, niece, and grandson, Ms. Walker is survived by 16 other grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, two sisters, and other relatives. Six sisters and two brothers died earlier.
Visitation with the family is to be from 9 to 10 a.m. Friday, Jan. 9, at Ezekiel Baptist Church, 5701 Grays Ave., Philadelphia, Pa. 19143. A service is to follow, and a repast at 2 p.m. Livestream is at repastai.com/frances.