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Walter Francis White
White photographed by Clara Sipprell, c. 1950
Executive Secretary of the NAACP
In office 1929–1955
Preceded by	James Weldon Johnson
Succeeded by	Roy Wilkins
Personal details
Born	Walter Francis White (1893-07-01)July 1, 1893 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Died	March 21, 1955(1955-03-21) (aged 61) New York City, U.S.
Spouses	Gladys Powell ​ ​(m. 1922; div. 1949)​ Poppy Cannon ​(m. 1949)​
Children	2, including Jane
Education	Atlanta University (BA)

Walter Francis White (July 1, 1893 – March 21, 1955) was an American civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for a quarter of a century, from 1929 until 1955. He directed a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist.

White first joined the NAACP as an investigator in 1918, at the invitation of James Weldon Johnson. He acted as Johnson's assistant national secretary and traveled to the South to investigate lynchings and race riots. Being light-skinned, at times he was able to pass as white to facilitate his investigations and protect himself in tense situations. White succeeded Johnson as the head of the NAACP in an acting capacity in 1929, taking over officially in 1931, and led the organization until his death in 1955. He joined the Advisory Council for the Government of the Virgin Islands in 1934, but he resigned in 1935 to protest President Franklin D. Roosevelt's silence at Southern Democrats' blocking of anti-lynching legislation to avoid retaliatory obstruction of his New Deal policies.

White oversaw the plans and organizational structure of the fight against public segregation. He worked with President Harry S. Truman on desegregating the armed forces after World War II and gave him a draft for the Executive Order to implement this. Under White's leadership, the NAACP set up its Legal Defense Fund, which conducted numerous legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, and achieved many successes. Among these was the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal. White also quintupled NAACP membership to nearly 500,000.

Early life

Walter was the son of George and Madeline White. By the time he was born, his father had attended Atlanta University, which is still known today as one of the South's historically black colleges, and had become a postal worker, an admired position in the federal government. His mother had graduated from the same institution and had become a teacher. (She had been briefly married in 1879 to Marshall King, who died the same year.) He attended the Atlanta public schools, finished the Atlanta University high school in 1912, and the college there in the class of 1916. This period of study enabled White to spend eight years in the old Atlanta's unusual atmosphere at its zenith. There he was exposed to instruction which had been enriched by a decade of W. E. B. Du Bois' research. Undoubtedly White's life work reflected on the "Old Atlanta University's pioneer and still unequaled contributions in Southern colored institutions of higher learning." The White family belonged to the influential First Congregational Church, founded after the Civil War by freedmen and the American Missionary Association, based in the North. Of all the black denominations in Georgia, the Congregationalists were among the most socially, politically and financially powerful. Membership in First Congregational was the ultimate status symbol in Atlanta.

Of mixed race, with African and European ancestry on both sides, White appeared to be of European descent. He emphasized in his autobiography, A Man Called White (p. 3): "I am a Negro. My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond. The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me." Of his 32 great-great-great-grandparents, only five were black, and the other 27 were white. All members of his immediate family had fair skin, and his mother, Madeline, was also blue-eyed and blonde. The oral history of his mother's family asserts that her maternal grandparents were Dilsia, an enslaved woman concubine, and her owner, William Henry Harrison. Harrison had six children with Dilsia and, much later, was elected president of the United States in 1840, but served for only 31 days. Madeline's mother, Marie Harrison, was one of Dilsia's daughters with Harrison. Held in enslavement in La Grange, Georgia, where she had been sold, Marie became a concubine to Augustus Ware. The wealthy white man bought her a house, had four children with her, and passed on some wealth to them. White and his family identified as Negro and lived among Atlanta's Negro community (despite White and his siblings inheriting a bit less than 16 percent African ancestry and being able to pass as white).

George and Madeline White took a kind but firm approach in rearing their children, encouraging hard work and regular schedules. In his autobiography, White relates that his parents ran a strict schedule on Sundays; they locked him in his room for silent prayer, a time so boring that he almost begged to do homework. His father forbade Walter from reading any books less than 25 years old so he chose to read Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope by the time he was 12. When he was 8, he threw a rock at a white child who called him a derogatory name for drinking from the fountain reserved for black people. Events such as this shaped White's self-identity. He began to develop skills to pass for white, which he used later to preserve his safety as a civil rights activist in the South.

Career

White was educated at Atlanta University, a historically black college. W. E. B. Du Bois had already moved to the North before White enrolled, but Du Bois knew White's parents well. Du Bois had taught two of White's older siblings at Atlanta University. Du Bois and Walter White later disagreed about how best to gain civil rights for black people, but they shared a vision for the country. (See Atlanta Conference of Negro Problems.)

After graduating in 1916, White took a position with the Standard Life Insurance Company, one of the new and most successful businesses started by black people in Atlanta.

He also worked to organize a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had been founded in 1909. He and other leaders were successful in getting the Atlanta School Board to support improving education for black children, who were taught in segregated schools, which were traditionally underfunded by the white-dominated legislature. (Black people had been effectively disfranchised at the turn of the century by Georgia's passage of a new constitution making voter registration more difficult, as did all the other former Confederate states.)

At the invitation of activist and writer James Weldon Johnson, 25-year-old White moved to New York City. In 1918, he started working at the national headquarters of the NAACP. White began as secretary assistant of the NAACP; Du Bois and other leaders got over their concerns about his youth. White became an undercover agent in investigating lynchings in the South, which were at a peak. With his keen investigative skills and light complexion, White proved to be the NAACP's secret weapon against white mob violence.

White passed as white as an NAACP investigator, finding both more safety in hostile environments and gaining free communication with white people in cases of violations of civil and human rights. He sometimes became involved in Klan groups in the South to expose those involved in lynchings and other murders. In the Little Rock, Arkansas, area he escaped on a train, having been harbored by several prominent black families because of threats that a black man "passing for white" was being hunted down to be lynched. The NAACP publicized information about these crimes, but virtually none was ever prosecuted by local or state southern governments.

To become a popular leader, White had to compete with the appeal of Marcus Garvey; he learned to display a skillful verbal dexterity. Roy Wilkins, his successor at the NAACP, said: "White was one of the best talkers I've ever heard."

Throughout his career, Walter White spoke out against segregation and discrimination but also black nationalism. Most notably, White and Du Bois's 1934 conflict was over the latter's endorsement of black people's voluntary separation within US society.

Marriage and family

White married Gladys Powell in 1922. They had two children, Jane White, who became an actress on Broadway and television; and Walter Carl White, who lived in Germany for much of his adult life. The Whites' 27-year marriage ended in divorce in 1949.

Because White was a public figure of a noted African-American rights organization, he generated great public controversy shortly after his divorce by marrying Poppy Cannon, a divorced white South African woman, who was a magazine editor with connections in the emerging television industry. Many of his black colleagues and acquaintances were offended. Some claimed the leader had always wanted to be white; others said he had always been white.

Gladys and their children broke off with White and his second wife. White's sister said that he had wanted all along simply to pass as a white person. His son changed his name to Carl Darrow, signifying his disgust and desire to separate himself from his father.

Marie Harrison

Marie Harrison was White's grandmother. Harrison was born into slavery to a mother named Dilsia. Harrison was fathered by future President William Henry Harrison. According to White's oral history, when Harrison decided to run for president, he concluded that it would not be politically advantageous for him to have "bastard slave children" in his home. So, he gave four of Dilsia's children (including Marie Harrison) to his brother. His brother sold them to Joseph Poythress, one of the earliest white settlers of LaGrange, Georgia.

NAACP

Investigating riots and lynchings

White used his appearance to increase his effectiveness in conducting investigations of lynchings and race riots in the American South. He could "pass" and talk to white people as one of them, but he could talk to black people as one of them and identified with them. Such work was dangerous: "Through 1927 White would investigate 41 lynchings, 8 race riots, and two cases of widespread peonage, risking his life repeatedly in the backwaters of Florida, the piney woods of Georgia, and in the cotton fields of Arkansas." In his autobiography, A Man Called White, he dedicates an entire chapter to a time when he almost joined the Ku Klux Klan undercover. White became a master of incognito investigating. He started with a letter from a friend who recruited new members of the KKK. After correspondence between him and Edward Young Clark, leader of the KKK, Clark tried to interest White in joining. Invited to Atlanta to meet with other Klan leaders, White declined, fearing that he would be at risk of his life if his true identity were discovered. White used the access to Klan leaders to further his investigation into the "sinister and illegal conspiracy against human and civil rights which the Klan was concocting." After deeper inquiries into White's life, Clark stopped sending signed letters. White was threatened by anonymous letters that stated his life would be in danger if he ever divulged any of the confidential information he had received. By then, White had already turned the information over to the U.S. Department of Justice and New York Police Department. He believed that undermining the hold of mob violence would be crucial to his cause.

White first investigated the October 1919 Elaine Race Riot, where white vigilantes and Federal troops in Phillips County, Arkansas killed between 100 and 237 black sharecroppers. The case had both labor and racial aspects. Black sharecroppers were meeting on issues related to organizing with an agrarian union, which white vigilantes were attempting to suppress. They had established guards because of the threat, and a white man was killed. The white militias had come to the town and hunted down black people in retaliation for that death and to suppress the labor movement.

During the Tulsa race massacre, White was inadvertently deputized. One of his fellow deputies told him he could shoot any black person and the law would be behind him.

Granted press credentials from the Chicago Daily News, White gained an interview with Arkansas Governor Charles Hillman Brough, who would not have met with him as the NAACP representative. Brough gave White a letter of recommendation to help him meet people and his autographed photograph.

Learning that his identity was discovered, White was in Phillips County briefly before taking the first train back to Little Rock. The conductor told him that he was leaving "just when the fun is going to start" because they had found out that there was a "damned yellow nigger down here passing for white and the boys are going to get him." Asked what they would do to him, the conductor told White, "When they get through with him he won't pass for white no more!" "High yellow" is a term used to refer to black people of mixed-racial descent and visible European features.

White published his findings about the riot and trial in the Daily News, the Chicago Defender, and The Nation, as well as the NAACP's own magazine, The Crisis. Governor Brough asked the United States Postal Service to prohibit mailings of the Chicago Defender and The Crisis to Arkansas, and others tried to get an injunction against distribution of the Defender at the local level.

The NAACP provided legal defense of the black men convicted by the state for the riot and carried the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Its ruling overturned the Elaine convictions and established important precedent about the conduct of trials. The Supreme Court found that the original trial was held under conditions that adversely affected the defendants' rights. Some of the courtroom audience were armed, as was a mob outside, so there was intimidation of the court and jury. The 79 black defendants had been quickly tried and convicted by an all-white jury: 12 were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death; 67 were condemned to sentences from 20 years to life. No white man was prosecuted for any of the many black deaths.

Scottsboro Trial

White's first major struggle as leader of the NAACP centered on the Scottsboro Trial in 1931. It was also a case that tested the competition between the NAACP and the American Communist Party to represent the black community. The NAACP and Walter White wanted to increase their following in the black community. Weeks after White started in his new position at the NAACP, nine black teenagers looking for work were arrested after a fight with a group of white teens as the train both groups were riding on passed through Scottsboro, Alabama. Two white girls accused the nine black teenagers of rape.

Locked in a cell awaiting trial, the "Scottsboro boys looked to be prime lynching material: dirt poor, illiterate, and of highly questionable moral character even for teenagers." The Communist Party and the NAACP both hoped to prove themselves as the party to represent the black community. Scottsboro was an important battle ground for the two groups. The Communists had to destroy black citizens' faith in the NAACP in order to take control of leadership, and they believed that a Scottsboro victory was a way to solidify this superior role over the NAACP. Their case against the NAACP was easier, as White and other leaders were second in approaching the case after the International Labor Defense. Ultimately, the differing approaches to the case demonstrated the conflicting ideals between the two organizations. To White, "Communism meant that blacks have two strikes against them: blacks were aliens in white society where skin color was more important than initiative or intelligence, and blacks would also be Reds which meant a double dose of hatred from white Americans." White believed the NAACP had to keep distance and independence from the Communist Party for this reason. Ultimately, the Communist leaders failed to consolidate their position with black people.

White said: "The shortsightedness of the Communist leaders in the United States (led to their eventual failure); Had they been more intelligent, honest, and truthful there is no way of estimating how deeply they might have penetrated into Negro life and consciousness." White meant the Communists' philosophy of branding anyone opposed to their platform was their failure. He believed the NAACP had the best defense counsel in the country, but the Scottsboro boys' families chose to go with the ILD partly because they were first on the scene.

White believed in capitalist America and used communist propaganda as leverage to promote his own cause in securing civil liberties. He advised white America to reconsider its position of unfair treatment because they might find the black population choosing radical alternative methods of protest. Ultimately, White and other NAACP leaders decided to continue involvement with the Scottsboro boys since it was only one of many efforts they had.

In his autobiography, White gave a critical summary of the injustice in Scottsboro:

In the intervening years it had become increasingly clear that the tragedy of a Scottsboro lies, not in the bitterly cruel injustice which it works upon its immediate victims, but also, and perhaps even more, in the cynical use of human misery by Communists in propagandizing Communism, and in the complacency with which a democratic government views the basic evils from which such a case arises. A majority of Americans still ignore, the plain implications in similar tragedies.

Anti-lynching legislation

White was a strong proponent and supporter of federal anti-lynching bills, which were unable to surmount the opposition by the Southern Democrats in the Senate. One of White's many surveys showed that 46 of 50 lynchings during the first six months of 1919 were black victims, 10 of whom were burned at the stake. After the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, White, like Ida Wells-Barnett, concluded the causes of such violence were not rape of a white woman by a black man, as was often rumored, but rather the result of "prejudice and economic competition."

That was also the conclusion of a Chicago city commission, which investigated the 1919 rioting; it noted specifically that ethnic Irish in South Chicago had led the anti-black attacks. The Irish were considered highly political and strongly territorial against other groups, including more recent white immigrants from eastern Europe.

In the late 1910s, newspapers reported a decreasing number of southern lynchings but postwar violence in Northern and Midwestern cities increased under the competition for work and housing by returning veterans, immigrants and black migrants. In the Great Migration, hundreds of thousands of black people were leaving the South for jobs in the North. The Pennsylvania Railroad recruited tens of thousands of workers from Florida alone.

Rural violence also continued. White investigated violence in 1918 in Lowndes and Brooks counties, Georgia. The worst case was when "a pregnant black woman tied to a tree and burned alive after which (the mob) split her open, and her child, still alive, was thrown to the ground and stomped by some of the members."

White lobbied for federal anti-lynching bills during his time as leader of the NAACP. In 1922, the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was passed overwhelmingly by the House, the "first piece of legislation passed by the House of Representatives since Reconstruction that specifically protected blacks from lynchings." Congress never passed the Dyer bill, as the Senate was controlled by Southerners who opposed it.

Black people were then largely disfranchised in southern states, which were politically controlled by white Democrats. At the turn of the 20th century, the state legislatures had passed discriminatory laws and constitutions that effectively created barriers to voter registration and closed black people out of the political process. White sponsored other civil rights legislation, which was also defeated by the Southern bloc: the Castigan-Wagner bill of 1935, the Gavagan bill of 1937, and the VanNuys bill of 1940. Southerners had to mount a major political and financial effort to take the Castigan-Wagner bill out of consideration and to defeat the Gavagan bill.

White had become a powerful figure: segregationist senator James F. Byrnes of South Carolina said in session about the Dyer bill, "One Negro has ordered this bill to pass. If Walter White should consent to have this bill laid aside its advocates would desert it as quickly as football players unscramble when the whistle of the referee is heard." White's word was the only thing that kept the bill before Congress. Although the bill did not pass the Senate, White and the NAACP secured widespread public support for the cause. By 1938, a Gallup poll found that 72% of Americans and 57% of Southerners favored an anti-lynching bill. White also contributed to creating alliances among civil rights activists, many of whom went on to lead in the movement from the 1950s.

Attacks on Paul Robeson

During the McCarthy era, White did not openly criticize McCarthy's campaign in Congress against communists, which was wide-ranging. American fears of communism were heightened, and the FBI had been trying to classify civil rights activists as communists. White feared a backlash that might cost the NAACP its tax-exempt status and end up with people equating civil rights with communism.

White criticized singer/activist Paul Robeson, who admitted to pro-Soviet leanings. Together with Roy Wilkins, the editor of The Crisis, he arranged for distribution of "Paul Robeson: Lost Shepherd", a leaflet against Robeson, which was written under a pseudonym.

Literary career

Through his cultural interests and his close friendships with white literary power brokers Carl Van Vechten and Alfred A. Knopf, Sr., White was one of the founders of the "New Negro" cultural flowering. Popularly known as the Harlem Renaissance, the period was one of intense literary and artistic production. Harlem became the center of black American intellectual and artistic life. It attracted creative people from across the nation, as did New York City in general.

Writer Zora Neale Hurston accused Walter White of stealing her designed costumes from her play The Great Day. White never returned the costumes to Hurston, who repeatedly asked for them by mail.

After Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American to win an Oscar, the 1939 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Gone with the Wind and beating Olivia de Havilland, White accused her of being an Uncle Tom. McDaniel responded that she would "rather make seven hundred dollars a week playing a maid than seven dollars being one"; she further questioned White's qualification to speak on behalf of blacks, since he was light-skinned and only one-eighth black.

White was the author of critically acclaimed novels: Fire in the Flint (1924) and Flight (1926). His non-fiction book Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (1929) was a study of lynching. Additional books were A Rising Wind (1945, which inspired Nevil Shute to write the popular novel The Chequer Board two years later), his autobiography A Man Called White (1948), and How Far the Promised Land (1955). Unfinished at his death was Blackjack, a novel on Harlem life and the career of an African-American boxer.

Awards and honors

• 1927 – White received the Harmon Award (William E. Harmon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement among Negroes) for his book Rope and Faggot: An Interview with Judge Lynch, a study of lynching.
• 1937 – Awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP, for outstanding achievement by an African American.
• 2002 – Molefi Kete Asante listed Walter Francis White on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.
• 2009 – White was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Death

At the age of 61, White died of a heart attack in New York City on March 21, 1955.

See also

• List of civil rights leaders

References

1. Nina Mjagkij (2003). Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations. Routledge. p. 323. ISBN 1-135-58123-1.
2. "Walter White, Secretary Of NAACP, Dies". The Knoxville Journal. March 22, 1955. p. 18. Retrieved April 3, 2024 – via Newspapers.com.
3. "World War II and the Post War Years - NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom | Exhibitions - Library of Congress". Library of Congress. February 21, 2009. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
4. "Walter White, Mr. NAACP (April 2003) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin". Library of Congress. April 2003. Retrieved April 3, 2024.
5. William Jelani Cobb (December 6, 2004). "Past Imperfect: Post Mfume". Afro-Netizen.com. Archived from the original on February 16, 2007.
6. ^ Dyja, Tom, Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008, p. 12.
7. ^ Kenneth Robert Janken, Walter White: Mr. NAACP, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 2–4.
8. "Walter Francis White". The Journal of Negro History. 40 (3): 296–298. January 1, 1955. doi:10.1086/JNHv40n3p296. JSTOR 2715961. S2CID 224831169.
9. The Decatur Herald (Decatur, Illinois) March 25, 1955, Fri • Page 6
10. Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White, University of Georgia Press, 1995, p. 3.
11. Phillips, Amber (November 25, 2021). "Warren Harding and 5 other presidents who have faced 'love child' questions". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved July 23, 2023.
12. Miller, Stuart (February 9, 2022). "He risked his life to become a founding father of civil rights. Why was he forgotten?". Los Angeles Times.
13. Dyja (2008), Walter White, p. 121.
14. ^ Dyja (2008), Walter White, p. 18.
15. ^ Dyja, Walter White (2008), p. 15.
16. Toppin, Edgar A. (April 1967). "Walter White and the Atlanta NAACP's Fight for Equal Schools, 1916–1917". History of Education Quarterly. 7 (1): 3–21. doi:10.2307/367230. ISSN 0018-2680. JSTOR 367230.
17. Janken, Walter White: Mr. NAACP (2006), p. 57.
18. Dyja (2008), Walter White, p. 61.
19. Janken (2006), Mr. NAACP, p. XIV.
20. George Hutchinson, In Search of Nella Larsen: a Biography of the Color Line, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 253.
21. ^ Dyja (2008), Walter White, p. 181.
22. Janken, Kenneth Robert (2003). Walter White: Mr. NAACP. UNC Press. pp. 1–3. ISBN 978-0807857809.
23. Dyja (2008), Walter White, p. 48.
24. ^ Walter White. A Man Called White, p. 54.
25. ^ Walter White. A Man Called White, p. 55.
26. R. Halliburton (1972). "The Tulsa Race War of 1921". Journal of Black Studies. 2 (3): 333–357. doi:10.1177/002193477200200305. JSTOR 2783722. S2CID 161789413.
27. ^ Gloster b. Current (March 1969). "Walter White and the Fight for Freedom". The Crisis: 115. ISSN 0011-1422. Retrieved November 20, 2010.; see also "RACES: The Colored Man's White", Time Magazine, April 4, 1955.
28. White, Walter F. (August 23, 2001). "Tulsa, 1921". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
29. Walter White, A Man Called White, reprint, 1995, p. 49, accessed April 12, 2008.
30. ^ Dyja, Walter White (2008), p. 121.
31. ^ Pratt, Charles A., "Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People". MA thesis. Western Michigan University. 1971, p. 6. OCLC 8174738
32. Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 9.
33. Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 14.
34. ^ Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 11.
35. Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 15.
36. Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 17.
37. Walter White. A Man Called White, p. 33.
38. Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 19.
39. Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 20.
40. Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 22.
41. ^ Pratt (1971), "Walter White", p. 30.
42. ^ Dyja, Walter White (2008), p. 149.
43. Mark Newman, "Civil Rights and Human Rights", review of Carol Andersen's Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955, in Reviews in American History, Vol. 32, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 247–254, accessed April 12, 2008.
44. Duberman, Martin. Paul Robeson, Random House, 1989, p. 396.
45. "Why you feel that I am not due any answer about my costumes?" Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, p. 202.
46. Haskell, Molly (2010). Frankly, My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited. Icons of America. Yale University Press. p. 213–214. ISBN 978-0300164374.
47. Richard Thorne. Shute: the Engineer Who Became Prince of Storytellers (2017), p. 144
48. Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York. Prometheus Books. ISBN 1573929638.
49. "Writers hall picks four inductees". Athens Banner Herald. Online Athens. September 19, 2009. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved September 20, 2009.
50. "Walter White". May 14, 2021.

Further reading

• Baime, A. J. (2022). White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America's Darkest Secret. New York: Mariner Books. ISBN 978-0-35844775-7
• Cortner, Richard C. (1988). A Mob Intent on Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-8195-5161-0
• Kluger, Richard (1977). Simple Justice. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 0-394-47289-6
• Lewis, David Levering (1980). When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-49572-9
• Lewis, David Levering (2000). W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963. Holt. ISBN 978-0-8050-2534-7
• Ronald L. Lewis and Zangrando, Robert L. (2019). Walter F. White: The NAACP's Ambassador for Racial Justice. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press. ISBN 978-1-946684-62-2

External links

• White, Walter (June 14, 1954). "All or Nothing". This I Believe.
• Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University: Walter and Gladys Powell White family papers, 1890-2010
• Walter Francis White and Poppy Cannon Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
• Part of his life is retold in the radio drama "Investigator For Democracy", a presentation from Destination Freedom

v t e Civil rights movement (1954–1968)
Events (timeline)	Prior to 1954 Journey of Reconciliation Executive Order 9981 Murders of Harry and Harriette Moore Sweatt v. Painter (1950) McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) Baton Rouge bus boycott 1954–1959 Brown v. Board of Education Bolling v. Sharpe Briggs v. Elliott Davis v. Prince Edward County Gebhart v. Belton Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company Emmett Till Montgomery bus boycott Browder v. Gayle Tallahassee bus boycott Mansfield school desegregation 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom "Give Us the Ballot" Royal Ice Cream sit-in Little Rock Nine Cooper v. Aaron Civil Rights Act of 1957 Ministers' Manifesto Katz Drug Store sit-in Kissing Case Biloxi wade-ins 1960–1963 New Year's Day March Sit-in movement Greensboro sit-ins Nashville sit-ins Sibley Commission Atlanta sit-ins Savannah Protest Movement Greenville Eight Civil Rights Act of 1960 Ax Handle Saturday Gomillion v. Lightfoot Boynton v. Virginia University of Georgia desegregation riot Rock Hill sit-ins Robert F. Kennedy's Law Day Address Freedom Rides Anniston bombing Birmingham attack Garner v. Louisiana Albany Movement Cambridge movement University of Chicago sit-ins "Second Emancipation Proclamation" Meredith enrollment, Ole Miss riot Atlanta's Berlin Wall "Segregation now, segregation forever" Stand in the Schoolhouse Door 1963 Birmingham campaign Letter from Birmingham Jail Children's Crusade Birmingham riot 16th Street Baptist Church bombing John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation on Civil Rights Detroit Walk to Freedom March on Washington "I Have a Dream" Big Six St. Augustine movement 1964–1968 Twenty-fourth Amendment Chester school protests Bloody Tuesday 1964 Monson Motor Lodge protests Freedom Summer workers' murders Civil Rights Act of 1964 Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States Katzenbach v. McClung 1964–1965 Scripto strike 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches "How Long, Not Long" Voting Rights Act of 1965 Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections March Against Fear White House Conference on Civil Rights Chicago Freedom Movement/Chicago open housing movement Loving v. Virginia Memphis sanitation strike King assassination funeral riots Civil Rights Act of 1968 Poor People's Campaign Green v. County School Board of New Kent County Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. 1968 Olympics Black Power salute
Activist groups	Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights Atlanta Negro Voters League Atlanta Student Movement Black Panther Party Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) Committee for Freedom Now Committee on Appeal for Human Rights An Appeal for Human Rights Council for United Civil Rights Leadership Council of Federated Organizations Dallas County Voters League Deacons for Defense and Justice Georgia Council on Human Relations Highlander Folk School Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Lowndes County Freedom Organization Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Montgomery Improvement Association NAACP Youth Council Nashville Student Movement Nation of Islam Northern Student Movement National Council of Negro Women National Urban League Operation Breadbasket Regional Council of Negro Leadership Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Southern Regional Council Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) The Freedom Singers United Auto Workers (UAW) Wednesdays in Mississippi Women's Political Council
Activists	Ralph Abernathy Victoria Gray Adams Zev Aelony Mathew Ahmann Muhammad Ali William G. Anderson Gwendolyn Armstrong Arnold Aronson Ella Baker James Baldwin Marion Barry Daisy Bates Harry Belafonte James Bevel Claude Black Gloria Blackwell Randolph Blackwell Unita Blackwell Ezell Blair Jr. Joanne Bland Julian Bond Joseph E. Boone William Holmes Borders Amelia Boynton Bruce Boynton Raylawni Branch Stanley Branche Ruby Bridges Aurelia Browder H. Rap Brown Ralph Bunche John H. Calhoun Guy Carawan Stokely Carmichael Johnnie Carr James Chaney J. L. Chestnut Shirley Chisholm Colia Lafayette Clark Ramsey Clark Septima Clark Xernona Clayton Eldridge Cleaver Kathleen Cleaver Josephine Dobbs Clement Charles E. Cobb Jr. Annie Lee Cooper Dorothy Cotton Claudette Colvin Vernon Dahmer Jonathan Daniels Abraham Lincoln Davis Angela Davis Joseph DeLaine Dave Dennis Annie Bell Robinson Devine John Wesley Dobbs Patricia Stephens Due Joseph Ellwanger Charles Evers Medgar Evers Myrlie Evers-Williams Chuck Fager James Farmer Walter Fauntroy James Forman Marie Foster Golden Frinks Andrew Goodman Robert Graetz Fred Gray Jack Greenberg Dick Gregory Lawrence Guyot Prathia Hall Fannie Lou Hamer Fred Hampton William E. Harbour Vincent Harding Dorothy Height Audrey Faye Hendricks Lola Hendricks Aaron Henry Oliver Hill Donald L. Hollowell James Hood Myles Horton Zilphia Horton T. R. M. Howard Ruby Hurley Cecil Ivory Jesse Jackson Jimmie Lee Jackson Richie Jean Jackson T. J. Jemison Esau Jenkins Barbara Rose Johns Vernon Johns Frank Minis Johnson Clarence Jones J. Charles Jones Matthew Jones Vernon Jordan Tom Kahn Clyde Kennard A. D. King C.B. King Coretta Scott King Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Sr. Bernard Lafayette James Lawson Bernard Lee Sanford R. Leigh Jim Letherer Stanley Levison John Lewis Viola Liuzzo Z. Alexander Looby Joseph Lowery Clara Luper Danny Lyon Malcolm X Mae Mallory Vivian Malone Bob Mants Thurgood Marshall Benjamin Mays Franklin McCain Charles McDew Ralph McGill Floyd McKissick Joseph McNeil James Meredith William Ming Jack Minnis Amzie Moore Cecil B. Moore Douglas E. Moore Harriette Moore Harry T. Moore Queen Mother Moore William Lewis Moore Irene Morgan Bob Moses William Moyer Elijah Muhammad Diane Nash Charles Neblett Huey P. Newton Edgar Nixon Jack O'Dell James Orange Rosa Parks James Peck Charles Person Homer Plessy Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Fay Bellamy Powell Rodney N. Powell Al Raby Lincoln Ragsdale A. Philip Randolph George Raymond George Raymond Jr. Bernice Johnson Reagon Cordell Reagon James Reeb Frederick D. Reese Walter Reuther Gloria Richardson David Richmond Bernice Robinson Jo Ann Robinson Angela Russell Bayard Rustin Bernie Sanders Michael Schwerner Bobby Seale Pete Seeger Cleveland Sellers Charles Sherrod Alexander D. Shimkin Fred Shuttlesworth Modjeska Monteith Simkins Glenn E. Smiley A. Maceo Smith Kelly Miller Smith Mary Louise Smith Maxine Smith Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson Charles Kenzie Steele Hank Thomas Dorothy Tillman A. P. Tureaud Hartman Turnbow Albert Turner C. T. Vivian A. T. Walden Wyatt Tee Walker Hollis Watkins Walter Francis White Roy Wilkins Hosea Williams Kale Williams Robert F. Williams Q. V. Williamson Andrew Young Whitney Young Sammy Younge Jr. Bob Zellner James Zwerg
By region	Omaha, Nebraska South Carolina
Movement songs	"Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round" "If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus" "Kumbaya" "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" "Oh, Freedom" "This Little Light of Mine" "We Shall Not Be Moved" "We Shall Overcome" "Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom)"
Influences	Nonviolence Padayatra Sermon on the Mount Mahatma Gandhi Ahimsa Satyagraha The Kingdom of God Is Within You Frederick Douglass W. E. B. Du Bois Mary McLeod Bethune
Related	Jim Crow laws Lynching in the United States Plessy v. Ferguson Separate but equal Buchanan v. Warley Hocutt v. Wilson Sweatt v. Painter Hernandez v. Texas Loving v. Virginia African-American women in the movement Jews in the civil rights movement Fifth Circuit Four 16th Street Baptist Church Kelly Ingram Park A.G. Gaston Motel Bethel Baptist Church Brown Chapel Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Holt Street Baptist Church Edmund Pettus Bridge March on Washington Movement African-American churches attacked List of lynching victims in the United States Freedom Schools Freedom songs Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" Voter Education Project 1960s counterculture African American founding fathers of the United States Eyes on the Prize
Legacy	In popular culture Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument Civil Rights Memorial Civil Rights Movement Archive Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument Freedom Rides Museum Freedom Riders National Monument King Center for Nonviolent Social Change Martin Luther King Jr. Day Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial other King memorials Mississippi Civil Rights Museum National Civil Rights Museum National Voting Rights Museum St. Augustine Foot Soldiers Monument Olympic Black Power Statue
Noted historians	Taylor Branch Clayborne Carson John Dittmer Michael Eric Dyson Chuck Fager Adam Fairclough David Garrow David Halberstam Vincent Harding Steven F. Lawson Doug McAdam Diane McWhorter Charles M. Payne Thomas E. Ricks Timothy Tyson Akinyele Umoja Movement photographers
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