local economic and community development, writing about their efforts in The Harvard Paper: The African-American Church and Economic Development (1994). He was chair of the Central Harlem Local Development Corporation, to generate affordable housing units in Harlem to fill a critical need. Because of Walker's leading role in the Civil Rights Movement, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library collected his papers from the period of 1963–1982. They include both personal and official correspondence, papers and lectures on a wide variety of topics, and are available for research. Since college, Walker has been a member of the Gamma chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Return to Virginia After 37 years as senior pastor, Walker retired in 2004 with the title of pastor emeritus of Canaan Baptist Church. He spent his final years in Virginia and taught at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at his alma mater Virginia Union University in Richmond. Public education reform and charter schools Frustrated by the perpetual failure of the traditional public schools in Harlem and other underserved neighborhoods, Walker helped organize the passage of New York State's charter school law in 1998. In 1999, he joined with businessman-philanthropist Steve Klinsky to found the first ever charter school in New York State, now named the Sisulu-Walker Charter School of Harlem in honor of Walter Sisulu (Nelson Mandela's ally) and Dr. Walker. This school was one of just three New York charter schools to open in the law's first year of 1999, and is the only one from that year to survive. The school is community-run and has substantially outperformed the traditional public schools in Harlem's District 5, where most of the school's students live. The founding and history of Sisulu-Walker was described in the book "A Light Shines In Harlem" by Mary Bounds, which won the Phillis Wheatly Prize for best non-fiction work in 2015. Walker wrote the foreword for that book. Walker continues to support charter school reform from his home in Virginia. In 2016, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Charter School Alliance. This award had only been given once before: to President Bill Clinton. In September 2016, Walker gave an exclusive interview to RealClearLife.com where he stressed his support for charter schools as a key civil rights issue of our time, and where he stated his strong belief that Dr.