Alice Walker (1944– ) was raised in a sharecropping family in Eatonton, Georgia, and educated at Atlanta's Spelman College and then at Sarah Lawrence. In 1964, Walker visited Africa and then in 1966 took part in the voter registration drive in Mississippi. She tapped these experiences for her first book of poetry, Once (1968), which explores her roots and the African-American struggle for civil rights. Her first novel, Meridian (1976), also deals with civil rights and has been hailed as a sensitive portrayal of the movement. Her works reached a wider audience when her 1983 novel The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was made into a successful movie. A central theme in Walker's writing is her belief that "not enough credit has been given to the black woman who has been oppressed beyond recognition."