With great pleasure, we introduce to some and present to others, Rev. Donna Walker and the unique story of her journey and ministry of praise through dance. Thank you, Donna, for sharing this story which originally appeared in The Blade.
By Sarah Readdean, The Blade, sreaddean@theblade.com. June 2,2024 9:04 AM
Being inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. College of Ministers & Laity Board of Preachers at Morehouse College in April was the most recent of many awards and recognitions Toledo native Donna Walker has received over the last five decades.
Earlier awards for the Rev. Walker, who turns 72 this month, include first place for her Black dance company at the Toledo International Festival in 1978 and the Silver Slate Award in 1984 from Toledo Public Schools.
Last year, she received a citation from the Worship Arts Academy of Ghana recognizing her dedication to what is known as “praise dance.” She was in Ghana to judge a dance competition but was moved to tears when she found herself unexpectedly “receiving an honor in the motherland,” she said.
“To be in the motherland, where I know my ancestors were extracted out of there somewhere, and they had prayed, I know they did, our people have prayed to get back to the motherland.
Although they didn't make it back, in that moment I felt at peace because I felt like my ancestors got back to Africa,” Walker said. “They didn't get back in their bodies; they got back through my body because their blood is in me.”
As well as being an answer to her ancestors’ prayers, Walker said, being given an African name was “an affirmation and a confirmation of who I was.”
“Had my ancestors not been extracted from that land, I would have been given that name from the jump,” she said. “I wouldn't have been born Donna Eugenia Thomas. I would've been born the name they gave me — Maame Yaa Ataa Asantewa — a twin, born on a Thursday, a woman of distinction and honor who fights for the people.”
On the Board of Preachers at the Morehouse College, Walker said, she’ll continue to fight for justice, teach dance at historically Black colleges and universities, and work with young people to build a strong foundation of faith.
“I am embracing life and I'm gonna live it to my fullest,” she said. “And I'm gonna keep dancing that way and teaching life lessons through that dance.”
No ordinary preacher
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Walker was raised in Spencer Township near the Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport. After moving from Toledo to Atlanta in 1986, she enrolled in Spelman College at age 38 for theater and dance. She then received two master’s degrees from the Interdenominational Theological Center: a Master of Divinity and a Master in Christian Education.
In 2022, she received her Doctor of Ministry degree from the seminary.
She and her husband, Terry, are associate pastors at the Chapel of Christian Love Baptist Church in Atlanta. (While living in Toledo, Terry Walker was associate pastor of the then Christian Community Church at what is now H2O Church Toledo on Nebraska Avenue.)
Even though she’s an ordained Baptist minister, Donna Walker explained, “I preach through my dancing. I don't preach from the pulpit, per se.”
During a visit to the Ivory Coast, she learned the methodology of African dance — something she said wasn’t taught in the United States. It was there that she realized she could take her training in dance to minister to her dancers, showing them to praise as their authentic self.
“I was called into ministry and I was trying to figure out how God was gonna use me,” Walker said. “And then one day I had an epiphany moment: I didn't have to give up either one. I didn't have to choose between dancing and going into full ministry. I could actually use both of them to spread the Gospel because the Scripture says, ‘Blessed are the feet that spread the Gospel.’”
As Walker puts routines together, God is at the forefront, she said, and she works to express certain values of her faith through dance.
For example, her signature piece that closed Toledo performances in the ’80s, Ebenezer, was inspired by the Old Testament place of that name.
“This character is embodying all of the people coming out of slavery through the Underground Railroad,” Walker explained. “I wanted to give ode to my ancestors and people to say, ‘No matter what goes on and how hard it is to fight for your freedom, you must do that. So have your Ebenezer moment where you know God's got you. Hang on to the promise God has given us, that he knows the plan, and trust in it no matter what it looks like.’”
Major influences
Walker specializes in African, Afro-Cuban, Brazilian, and Haitian dance, while also having training in jazz, lyrical, and modern forms.
She started teaching African dance in the early 1970s at the Soul and Arts Creative Workshop, a community center founded by the late Russell Charles Taylor, in what is now a parking lot on Dorr Street near the Mott Branch Library.
Looking back, Walker sees that as her initial pastoral call.
“It was the way I nurtured my dancers: I took ordinary people off the street that wanted to do the arts but couldn't afford it,” she said. “They had somewhere to go after school and they would learn something and they were also in a safe space. It gave them a chance to thrive.”
Michael Hayes, a drummer who led the classes with Walker and still teaches African drumming in the city, echoed the way their efforts helped the community.
“I and Donna both believe that if we had been teaching our children art and music all over the community, that a lot of things that happened later on in the ’80s might not have had the effect it did,” he said, “because we were too busy in a rehearsal, too busy putting on a performance to be in the streets and winding up in jail.”
Walker formed the Umuzi-Ikahya Community Dance Company with the dancers she taught, and they performed at festivals and other venues in Toledo and beyond. The South African name means “to be like a family,” she explained. Whether it was helping each other out with childcare or keeping in touch decades later, Walker said those dancers “are like my family and I live my name Umuzi-Ikahya.”
State Sen. Paula Hicks-Hudson, and her two daughters, were students of Walker while she taught in the after-school program at the former Nathan Hale Elementary School. The former Toledo mayor commended Walker’s efforts to share the art and heritage of African dance with Toledoans.
“She exposed not just the African American neighborhood and community, but it was for the wider city,” Hicks-Hudson said, recalling dancing with Walker at the International Festival at the former Toledo Sports Arena and at the Toledo Gospel Arts Festival at the former downtown Portside Festival Marketplace in the 1980s.
“I don't know if you can separate faith from an African dance because it is a connection with ancestors, with higher powers, there’s connection with the earth,” Hicks-Hudson said. “That is who [Walker] is, and she exhibits that faith through her gift, [which] is to dance and to teach and really to encourage everyone.”
While the dancer hopes her pieces convey stories and feelings to her audiences, Walker said, it starts with the self.
“It’s an outlet to express, to accept, to affirm yourself. And as I'm doing that, then maybe I'm infectious enough for them to catch it,” she said.
“Dancing is my lifeline,” she continued. “It's the line that God gave me that saved me. It's the line that God told me, ‘I had you all along. All you had to do was reach up and grab it.’ And I did. I had to learn to stand still and know that God was God.”
Contact Sarah Readdean at sreaddean@theblade.com.
First Published June 2, 2024, 9:00 a.m.
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