Life and Legacy
A'Lelia Walker died on August 17, 1931 of a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by hypertension, the same ailment that led to her mother's death in 1919. She was surrounded by friends who had traveled to Long Branch, New Jersey to celebrate a friend's birthday party with lobster and champagne in the midst of the Great Depression and Prohibition.
Thousands of Harlemites lined up to view her body. As her casket was lowered into the ground next to her mother's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Hubert Julian—the celebrated "Black Eagle"—flew over in a small plane and dropped dahlias and gladiolas onto the site.
A'Lelia Walker traveled extensively throughout the United States as well as to Cuba and Panama. From November 1921 to May 1922, she visited Paris, London (where she visited Covent Garden), Rome (where she witnessed a papal coronation), Monte Carlo, Cairo, Jerusalem and Addis Ababa (where she met Empress Zauditu.)
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