In 1965, Walker met Melvyn Rosenman Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married on March 17, 1967, in New York City. Later that year, the couple relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, becoming the first legally married interracial couple in Mississippi since miscegenation laws were introduced in the state.[74][75] The couple had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1969. Walker and her husband divorced in 1976.[76]
In the late 1970s, Walker moved to northern California. In 1984, she and fellow writer Robert L. Allen co-founded Wild Tree Press, a feminist publishing company in Anderson Valley, California.[77] Walker legally added "Tallulah Kate" to her name in 1994 to honor her mother, Minnie Tallulah Grant, and paternal grandmother, Tallulah.[7] Minnie Tallulah Grant's grandmother, Tallulah, was Cherokee.[5]
Walker has claimed that she was in a romantic relationship with singer-songwriter Tracy Chapman in the mid-1990s: "It was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody's business but ours."[78] Chapman has not publicly commented on the existence of a relationship and maintains a strict separation between her private and public life.[79][80]
Walker's spirituality has influenced some of her best-known novels, including The Color Purple.[81] She has written of her interest in Transcendental Meditation.[82] Walker's exploration of religion in much of her writing draws on a literary tradition that includes writers like Zora Neale Hurston.[83]
Walker has never denied that there are some autobiographical dimensions to her stories. When "Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells" was first published in Ms. magazine, Walker included a disclaimer that "Luna and Freddie Pye are composite characters, and their names are made up. This is a fictionalized account suggested by a number of real events".[84] John O' Brien's 1973 interview with Walker offers further details.[85]
