Robert Major Walker made history in 1988 when he was elected as the first Black mayor of Vicksburg, a Mississippi River town largely known for Civil War tourism.

Walker died Tuesday at age 81, his family said.

During a long career that included public service and scholarly research, Walker helped shape how visitors to Vicksburg National Military Park learn about Black soldiers who fought for the Union in and around Vicksburg in 1863.

In 2004, the park dedicated a monument honoring the Black troops who played a key role in a Union victory at Milliken’s Bend, Louisiana – an area along the Mississippi River, north of Vicksburg. The U.S. Army secured control of the river by defeating Confederate forces in the Vicksburg Campaign, ultimately helping keep the nation together.

Walker proposed the monument in 1999 after he spent years doing research and securing money for it.

“Something had to be done to show the involvement of Black folk in the Civil War,” Walker told The Associated Press in 2024. “So much positive had been left out of the books of history. Everybody needed to know the truth.”

Before winning elected office, Walker was a civil rights leader who started a Head Start program to help children from low-income families in Vicksburg. He served as field secretary for the Mississippi NAACP in the early 1980s – a role that Medgar Evers had held from 1954 until he was assassinated in 1963.

Walker was elected as a Warren County supervisor in 1983 and was serving a second term when he won a 1988 special election to become Vicksburg mayor. He won a full term as mayor in 1989, was defeated in 1993 and then reelected in 1997.

George Flaggs, who served three consecutive terms as Vicksburg mayor from 2013 until the middle of this year, said Wednesday that Walker was a longtime friend and “a man of distinction.”

“He was a guy that never met a stranger. He was the most professional, honorable person I’ve known,” said Flaggs, who worked for each of Walker’s political campaigns.

Pointing to the work on the Black soldiers’ monument, Flaggs said Walker “was one of the most progressive mayors of the city of Vicksburg.”

“He was a joy to know,” Flaggs said. “He was a pragmatic person. He was a man before his time.”

Charlie Mitchell, a former editor of The Vicksburg Evening Post, described Walker as an honest, intelligent man.

“He didn’t speak without knowing what he was talking about,” Mitchell said. 

The flip side was that Walker sometimes “was painstakingly slow to make decisions,” Mitchell said. “He believed in consensus, and he believed patience would lead to consensus.”

Mitchell also said that Walker “got mad at me a lot.” 

Once, for example, the newspaper ran a front-page photo of Walker holding a glass of champagne at a local celebration, Mitchell said. Walker did not drink alcohol, including that champagne, and was holding the glass simply because someone had handed it to him.

“I didn’t take the picture,” Mitchell said. “I had no idea he didn’t drink.”

He said Walker called him and was upset because he was convinced the newspaper was trying to show him in an unflattering light. Mitchell tried to reassure him that wasn’t the case.

Mitchell said he respected Walker, and he and others tried to persuade Walker to run for a U.S. House seat in 1993, when Democratic Rep. Mike Espy, Mississippi’s first Black congressman since Reconstruction, became U.S. agriculture secretary. Walker declined.

A former TV executive, Frank Melton, was elected mayor of Jackson in 2005, and he chose Walker to serve as the capital city’s chief administrative officer. The two men’s personalities could hardly have been more different, Mitchell said Wednesday: Melton, who died in 2009, was a brash, consequences-be-damned cowboy, while Walker was even-tempered and methodical.

Walker also served as interim athletic director at Jackson State University and taught at the University of Mississippi, Tougaloo College and Rust College.

The city of Vicksburg named a building for Walker in 2019. Funeral arrangements were incomplete as of Wednesday.