While many consider the birth of the civil rights movement to be 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus, the stage had been set decades before by activists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some of the NAACP leaders are familiar, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall, but Walter White, head of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, has been all but forgotten. Like virtually all light-skinned African Americans of his day, White was descended from enslaved Black women and powerful white men. But he was Black — by law, identity, and conviction and spent his entire life fighting for Black civil rights. Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP traces the life of this neglected civil rights hero and seeks to explain his disappearance from our history.
“The case of Walter White is hard to imagine from today’s perspective. The head
of the N.A.A.C.P. from 1929 to 1955, he was also Caucasian in appearance. He could easily pass for white, but did so only to investigate lynchings in the Deep South and to bring his findings to the wider public. In his time, he was a rock star.”
-The New York Times
of the N.A.A.C.P. from 1929 to 1955, he was also Caucasian in appearance. He could easily pass for white, but did so only to investigate lynchings in the Deep South and to bring his findings to the wider public. In his time, he was a rock star.”
-The New York Times
“A gripping chronicle of the NAACP’s fight for equality…Forgotten Hero restores Walter White’s status among the pantheon of civil rights leaders.”
-The Progressive
-The Progressive