Danielle Walker, Black W.V. legislator, stands up for abortion rights

Walker, 46, then spoke of her own experience seeking an abortion, one that gave her a second chance at life by letting her leave what she called a toxic relationship. Walker, the only Black woman in the legislature, and Orr may not look like the average West Virginian, she said, but they too were entitled to the freedoms that state lawmakers so often say are core of the identity of the state.

“Are Mountaineers always free?” Walker asked. “I am shaken to my core, and I will definitely be a red vote on this bill, because I definitely respect the choices of the Mountaineers who I know are capable of making decisions on their health care.”

On Tuesday, shortly after she spoke, the West Virginia legislature passed a near total ban on abortions in the state, with abortions allowed for victims of rape and incest only if reported to law enforcement and occurring in a narrow window. The House of Delegates voted 78-17, with a handful of Democrats joining Republicans, to pass the new law. On Friday, Gov. Jim Justice (R) signed it into law.

It was the close of a drama that made Walker, who has recently become vice chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party, the face of the abortion rights movement in the predominantly Republican state where fewer than 4 percent of residents are Black. That position has thrust her into the center of politics in a state legislature dominated by conservative White men, and led to threats on her life.

On the first day of Black History Month this year, Walker received an email with the subject line, “Your Plan.” Walker, expecting that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court would soon overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed access to abortion nationwide, had co-sponsored a bill that would enshrine abortion rights in state law — the plan to which the email referred.

The email included an image of a Ku Klux Klansman giving a Nazi salute. It was captioned: “What do you think the coward hiding under his dunce cap and face mask thinks every time he hears about a black child has been aborted? Be Pro-Life as if your race depended on it! It’s the America thing to do!”

At first, Walker stayed quiet about the email. But when antiabortion protesters arrived at the Capitol later in February, she took to Facebook Live to explain why she no longer felt safe there.

“For some of you who have only seen a white sheet and that hat on movies but not up close and personal, you are privileged,” said Walker, who has often advocated for policies by highlighting her personal story, be it the abortion she received or the death of her son last year from leukemia.

“But some of us who had to see the remnants in our photo album of Black churches being burned down, of Black men and Black children, sons, being hanged in trees or drug behind vehicles or beaten to death or poured with gasoline and set on fire, raping their wives, or even throwing bombs in their homes — how dare you send that to me,” she said through tears.

A week later the organization behind the email, the Berkeley County West Virginians for Life, issued an apology for using what it called “a clearly racist image.” The intent was to “point out that racists would likely support the eugenic abortion of Black people,” Richard Desmoske of Berkeley County West Virginians for Life wrote. “In an effort to oppose racism, I composed a poorly designed and easily misunderstood meme that unintentionally conveyed racism.”

In a lawsuit that Walker filed against the organization alleging emotional distress and intimidation, she called the email “the modern-day digital equivalent of burning a cross in Delegate Walker’s front yard. Everyone knows that burning a cross in the front yard means ‘do what we white supremacists want, or we are coming back, and it will be worse when we do.’”

The court in Charleston threw out her lawsuit, concluding it wasn’t the appropriate venue. Last week, Walker refiled her case at a circuit court in Morgantown, where she lives. Berkeley County West Virginians for Life did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Walker has had a bodyguard since 2020, when she said she received an assassination threat after appearing at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kingwood, W.Va., where she and other protesters were approached by armed counterprotesters and white nationalist groups. She reported the threat to federal, state and local officials, but Walker said no one would provide her with additional security, so she hired her own, paid for by her campaign.

“I didn’t want to be another hashtag,” she said. “I didn’t want to go down as a martyr.”

After the vote on Tuesday, Walker spoke to the crowd of abortion rights protesters who had stuck around the Capitol Rotunda after the vote, to jeer lawmakers who voted for the bill and cheer on those like her, who hadn’t.

“We will organize, we will strategize, and we will mobilize,” Walker told the crowd of about three dozen, many of whom she knows personally. “It ain’t over until November 9th. Because November 8th we will stroll to the polls with confidence knowing that democracy will prevail in West Virginia. We will stroll to the polls because we know justice and liberty for all includes each and every one of us with a vagina, with a uterus, and with ovaries … what you saw today was not us going back, it was them going back because we won’t go back.”

Walker said she hopes to elect more Democrats and scare Republicans into reversing course on abortion — even in West Virginia, a state where Republicans hold supermajorities in the House of Delegates and state Senate. She declared, confidently, that this November would be “Roevember,” reprising a familiar line by abortion rights supporters.

Rita Ray, an 81-year-old who said she received a back-alley abortion before Roe, said she expected the vote but was still in shock.

“Women are trying to be responsible and do the best they can,” said Ray, a White woman who was among the crowd that Walker addressed at the end of the day. “I just can’t believe we are going back 50 years with women treated like second-class citizens with no bodily autonomy. I can’t believe it.”

Ray moved to West Virginia almost 60 years ago when she got a job in the coal fields and the political identity of the state was vastly different.

“This was a very progressive state for years and years,” she said. “We had a strong women’s movement. All of that has been lost over the years. For someone of my age it’s hard to see us go back instead of forward.”

Her two sons have left the state, like so many young people. But in Walker she said she sees hope for West Virginia.

“I would follow Delegate Walker to hell and back,” she said. “That is the most committed, inspiring, powerful, energetic woman. She is one of our biggest assets. She is the future of West Virginia.”

Orr, the 32-year-old community organizer whose letter Walker read on the House floor on Tuesday, met Walker at a rally Orr organized in the wake of the violent protests in Charlottesville, in 2017, in which a woman protesting a march of white nationalists was killed when a man drove his car through a crowd. They later volunteered on Walker’s first campaign for a seat in the House of Delegates in 2018.

Orr testified on the House floor earlier this year about being an abortion patient and a rape survivor. Orr said that they have been inspired by Walker’s continued willingness to persevere in the face of threats.

“Danielle gave me the confidence and just the stamina to get involved in organizing and to get involved in politics,” Orr said. “As an older trans person I want to make West Virginia better for younger queer folks, but it’s difficult some days.”

Walker was born in New Iberia, La. She married young, she said, but her first husband died. She remarried at 29 and moved to Morgantown, with her new husband. The two later divorced, but Walker decided to stay in Morgantown to raise their two boys. In 2021, she came out as queer.

Walker became a staple at protests in Morgantown, the home of West Virginia University, for Black Lives Matter and other liberal causes. She decided to jump into elective politics in 2018, she said, because she felt that queer folks, college students and people of color were being ignored and that most lawmakers were governing as if those people simply didn’t exist.

Her proudest legislative accomplishment has been passing a law named after her son that established the Demetry Walker bone marrow and peripheral blood stem donation awareness program, which requires the state’s public health department to create and post information about bone marrow and peripheral blood stem donations. Most of Walker’s bills have failed to gain traction in the Republican-dominated legislature, but she says that’s not her only metric for success.

“I see the change that we are making by getting more people involved,” she said.

Tuesday’s vote showed just how hard it can be for Walker to challenge the status quo in Charleston. But she insisted that she wasn’t going to give up.

“I’m feeling motivated and energized,” Walker told The Post as she reflected on Tuesday’s vote. “I’m feeling that we don’t currently have the freedoms that we deserve, but life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is our birthright and we will take it back. We’re going to rally, we’re going to protest, we’re going to have town halls and candidate debates.”

Tiara Brown, the only Black face in the crowd that Walker addressed, on Tuesday said she was struggling to summon the same hope that Walker had and couldn’t see a political path forward on the issues she most cares about.

“People do not want change in this state,” said Brown, who works as a community organizer in Charleston. “Danielle has to walk around with security because there are a lot of people in this state who are afraid of change, and when people are afraid they do crazy things.”

But, Brown said, as a 24-year-old Black woman who grew up in a small West Virginia town where she was almost always the only Black face in the room, just seeing Walker on the floor of the House of Delegates gives her hope.

“It’s important to have individuals like Danielle Walker,” she said. “We usually don’t have a voice, but when Delegate Walker comes out, it lets everybody know that their vote matters, that their voice matters. That we can still make change regardless of how small our population is.”