The craft of writing attracted Margaret in her early years. Her dad admired writers and loved reading great books. Her mother loved to tell stories.

Growing up in an all-Black community, she and her family were known, cared about, and respected. But traveling several miles to school each day on a bus, and passing schools for white children along the way, aroused her curiosity. Why was that?

She wondered, “What’s this all about?” Not satisfied with the scant answers she received to this and other questions led her to research Black history. Her findings lit a spark in her desire to write. She began writing funny anecdotes about family life and brief articles, submitting them to publications including Afro American Newspaper, The Baltimore Sun, The Maryland Pendulum, the NAACP Newsletter, Essence, Metropolitan, American Visions, and Oasis, magazine of the Social Security Administration. Her later becoming a Christian conjoined her two passions: Christianity and African-American history.

She’d been educated at Morgan State College but learned that she needed to enhance her skills in order to write a book, so enrolled in a writing program at Johns Hopkins University. Enhanced skills paid off.

One of her former professors at Morgan State College had seen Margaret’s work in local publications and invited her to contribute to a biographical encyclopedia being compiled of Notable Black American Women. A woman named Catherine Ferguson (also referred to as Katy) was among several assigned to her. Margaret completed her assignment but wanted to know more about Mrs. Ferguson. Now she wanted to write a book.

A great writer once said, “If there’s a book that you want to read and it hasn’t been written you must write it.” And so she did--about Catherine Ferguson.