Guest Speaker: The Rediscovery of George "Nash" Walker - The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America

Announced on: Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026

September 15th at 6pm in Colusa Hall 100B, Special guest speaker event, "The Rediscovery of George "Nash" Walker: The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America."

For this free public talk, Dr. Daniel E. Atkinson is coming to Chico State to present on his new book.
"The Rediscovery of George "Nash" Walker: The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America" is the first biography dedicated to the life and cultural contributions of George Walker, an actor, writer, and producer who revolutionized Black American theatre in the early twentieth century. In partnership with comedian Bert Williams, Walker helped challenge the stereotypes of minstrel performance while insisting on carefully curated Black entertainment told from a uniquely Afro-American perspective. Despite his landmark contributions, Walker's story has been largely forgotten. Drawing on archival resources, newspaper accounts, memoirs, oral histories, and writings by Walker himself, Daniel E. Atkinson traces Walker's rise from a medicine show performer to a leading figure in American popular culture. This book celebrates the accomplishments of the vanguard generation of Black artists who were active between the close of the Civil War and the start of World War I.

Daniel Atkinson is an independent scholar and Assistant Director of August Wilson LLC. He earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Washington, where he specialized in Afro-American music and culture.

This film is FREE and open to the public!

For more information, please contact Dr. William Nitzky wnitzky@csuchico.edu or Dr. Garrett Liles gcliles@csuchico.edu.