## The Fifty-Eight Year Gap: Dormancy and Revival
For the next several decades, Mary Edwards Walker was not forgotten so much as misplaced. She appeared in some histories of the Civil War medical service, in some accounts of women’s suffrage, in some discussions of dress reform. But the specific story of the rescission and her refusal to give up the medal was not, for a long time, a prominent part of public understanding.
The active effort to change her status began with a campaign by a distant relative. Anne Walker of Mount Vernon, Virginia, researched the case, gathered the historical record, and brought the matter to the attention of the Army and of Congress. The campaign gained traction during the 1970s, a period in which women’s history was receiving new scholarly and popular attention, in which the contributions of women to American military history were being reassessed, and in which the specific stories of figures like Mary Edwards Walker fit a cultural moment that was paying closer attention to what had been overlooked.
The Army Board for Correction of Military Records reviewed the case. The board assessed the 1917 decision and reached a formal conclusion that the board that made it “may have erred” — hedged language for a formal institutional finding, but the direction was clear. The board recommended restoration of the medal.
The Army Secretary who acted on that recommendation was Clifford Alexander, appointed by President Jimmy Carter. On June 10, 1977, Alexander signed the order restoring Walker’s Medal of Honor posthumously.