WHITE, WALTER

Walter White (1893–1955), secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) between 1930 and 1955, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. According to his New York Times obituary (March 22, 1955), "Mr. White, the nearest approach to a national leader of American Negroes since Booker T. Washington, was a Negro by choice." The blonde-haired and blue-eyed White could "pass" for white, yet he chose not to do so. Central to his decision to identify himself as African American was his witnessing of the Atlanta race riot of 1906. After graduating from Atlanta University in 1916, White helped to found that city's branch of the NAACP; two years later, he moved to New York City to be the association's assistant secretary. Because of his complexion, his first assignments were incognito investigations of lynchings and race riots; between 1918 and 1926 he investigated more than forty acts of mob violence.

Lynching increased dramatically with the onset of the Depression, rising from an average of ten recorded in the nation each year during the late 1920s to thirty in the first nine months of 1930 alone. Reacting to this steady growth, in January 1934 White and the NAACP decided to make passage of a federal antilynching law a priority. For the next five years, White led this effort by persistently lobbying senators and representatives to pass such legislation sponsored variously by Senators Edward Costigan, Robert Wagner, and Frederick Van Nuys, and Representative Joseph Gavagan. Working out of congressional sponsors' offices, White directed the legislative strategy and publicity campaign. Three times he marshaled majorities in the Senate, only to have the bill defeated by a filibuster—or the threat of one—by southern senators.

White also made his presence felt in the White House. He and Eleanor Roosevelt became close friends, and she joined the NAACP board of directors after her husband's death in 1945. With her aid, White secured meetings with the president to plead the Negroes' case for antilynching legislation and equity in New Deal programs. Though White did persuade the president to denounce lynching, Roosevelt would not actively back an antilynching bill, and the Congress never passed one.

Under White's leadership, the NAACP developed a strategy to attack segregation in education. Beginning in 1934, association lawyers won important legal victories mandating that public universities admit black applicants on an equal basis to their professional programs and compelling public school systems to equalize black and white teachers' salaries. These were precedents for the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision declaring segregation in education unconstitutional.

Responding to rampant employment discrimination in defense industries and the labor movement's unwillingness to eliminate discrimination in its own ranks, White and A. Philip Randolph pressed the president to take corrective action. Threats of a mass march on Washington in June 1941 compelled Roosevelt to issue executive order 8802, which banned defense contractors from practicing racial discrimination.

WHITE, WALTER

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