Walter White

Walter White was an African American civil rights activist who led the NAACP for a quarter of a century after joining the organization in 1918. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist. Of multiracial descent, at times he passed as white to facilitate, and protect himself during, his investigations of lynchings and riots in the South. He worked with President Harry S. Truman on desegregating the armed forces after the Second World War, and under White’s leadership, the NAACP set up its Legal Defense Fund, which conducted numerous legal challenges to segregation and disenfranchisement. White quintupled NAACP membership to nearly 500,000 during his twenty-five years with the organization.