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. [16] His son changed his name to Carl Darrow, signifying his disgust and desire to separate himself from his father. [16] Marie Harrison [ edit ] 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. Editors, the; White, Walter F. (2001-08-23). "Tulsa, 1921". The Nation. ISSN 0027-8378 . Retrieved 2020-06-27. {{ cite news}}: |last1= has generic name ( help)

a b Kenneth Robert Janken, Walter White: Mr. NAACP, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp. 2–4. And on this day in 1906, they knew it was coming. There had been this situation boiling up in the city, all of this racial tension that came on with - along with the Jim Crow era. And on this day in September 1906, Walter sees the outbreak of the 1906 Atlanta race riot, which was reported in newspapers all over the country, all over Europe. And he says himself that he witnesses - he's 12 years old, and he witnesses a number of people who were killed. During White’s tenure as NAACP secretary, the association launched a series of legal suits designed to achieve equality between the races in education. This effort culminated in the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which declared unconstitutional the doctrine of “separate but equal.” White began investigating lynchings in the South, a terrifyingly regular occurrence. His appearance, paired with his Southern accent, meant he was able to obtain responses when he questioned politicians and suspected lynchers. The information he uncovered was then broadcast by the NAACP.

My Account

a b 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. BAIME: Well, of course, it was Walters. But let me set the scene for you. So Walter's - it's his 12th day in New York. So he's brand new. He wants to impress his bosses. And he has this new routine where he and James Weldon Johnson take a bus from Harlem down to the NAACP office, which was on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 14th Street. And they're on the bus and reading the newspaper. And they read about this - the torture and killing of a man named James McIlherron in a small town in Tennessee, and the article is all of, you know, one paragraph long. White published his findings about the riot and trial in the Daily News, the Chicago Defender, and The Nation, [23] 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. White soon faced a struggle in the NAACP as a result of his personal life. In 1922 he had married Leah Gladys Powell, a clerical worker in the association’s headquarters; they had two children, Jane and Walter. That marriage ended in divorce in 1949, and the same year he married Poppy Cannon, a white woman born in South Africa. Within the NAACP this interracial marriage provoked protests and calls for White’s resignation. But White, ever the defender of integration, shrugged off the criticism, maintaining that one’s choice of a mate was a private matter. Eleanor Roosevelt, who had joined the association’s board of directors after her husband’s death, saved White’s position by threatening to resign should White be dismissed. Although declining health soon forced him to turn over many of his administrative duties to Roy Wilkins, he remained the NAACP’s executive secretary and most important public spokesperson until his death in 1955. BAIME: It was extraordinarily effective in basically integrating the assembly lines during World War II. It didn't always go well, but the results were extremely important, and a huge victory for Walter, who was at this time building his national political platform.

But essentially, Walter's leadership was destroyed. His reputation was destroyed. His children refused to speak to him. And they never spoke to him again. His son even dropped the name White from the end of his name because he didn't want to be associated with his father because he was so hurt by what his father did. And that's one of the main reasons why people don't know who Walter White is today. So Walter White achieved a lot as head of the NAACP - built its national clout, built this relationship with the White House, and got some things done. But in his later years, events in his private life and marriage would affect his standing in the movement and his legacy. You know, just tell us what happened here. 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. [32] Anti-lynching legislation [ edit ]

A.J. Baime, welcome to FRESH AIR. Walter White grew up in Atlanta. He had blond hair and blue eyes. What do we know of his ancestors? DAVIES: Yeah. It was just remarkable that that happened. And then afterward, there was a senator in Ohio who had - I guess Roscoe McCulloch was his name - who had voted to put Judge Parker on the bench despite these racist statements. And he mobilized the NAACP to defeat this Republican senator for reelection - in effect, kind of making the point that you're not going to ignore our interests and simply be assured reelection. It worked. 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. [40] 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. [15]