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White, Walter Francis
5 articles on White, Walter Francis
White, Walter
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 3802 Includes: Early Work. | Executive Secretary of the NAACP. | Bibliography | Bibliography[This entry contains two subentries, on White's life and on his writings.]Walter Francis White (b. 1 July 1893; d. 21 March 1955) was a writer and civil rights acitivist and the executive secretary of the NAACP. Between 1918 and 1955 White was one of the most renowned and influential civil rights advocates in the United States. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, to George W. White and Madeline Harrison White, he possessed a light complexion that masked his African American heritage. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, White had the ability to pass for white, forcing him to continually pronounce and defend his racial identity to blacks and whites alike. But despite questions that followed him his entire life, he never lost his connection to his race.Growing up in segregated Atlanta, White attended Atlanta University ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 4861893–1955
African American civil rights leader and influential author of the Harlem Renaissance. Walter White grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood and, as a light-skinned, blue-eyed man, was able to pass for white. He credited a 1906 race riot in Atlanta, during which he defended his family's home from fire, as the incident that ignited his race consciousness as a black man. From that point on, he chose to live as an African American fighting for political and social justice.After graduating from Atlanta University in 1916, White began a career in activism with the Atlanta branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1918 he moved to New York to serve as assistant to NAACP executive secretary James Weldon Johnson. He was an invaluable researcher for the ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 1965 Includes: Further Reading | Obituaries:(1 July 1893–21 Mar. 1955), civil rights leader, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to George White, a mail carrier, and Madeline Harrison, a former schoolteacher. The fourth of seven children, White, whose parents had been born in slavery, grew up entrenched in black Atlanta's leading and most respected institutions: his family attended the prestigious First Congregational Church, and he received his secondary and collegiate education at Atlanta University, from which he graduated in 1916. (His siblings enjoyed similar religious training and educational opportunities.) With blond hair, blue eyes, and a light complexion, White was a “voluntary Negro,” a person who could “pass” for white yet chose not to do so. His black racial identity was annealed by the Atlanta riot of September 1906. ForUpon ...
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Source: American National Biography Online
Word Count: 1604 Includes: Bibliographycivil rights leader, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of George Washington White, a mail carrier, and Madeline Harrison, a teacher. His middle-class, African-American family took seriously its obligations to the black community, even though they all shared features and skin color that made them appear white. After graduating from Atlanta University in 1916, White worked for the Standard Life Insurance Company for almost two years. When the Atlanta school board threatened to discontinue seventh-grade classes for black students (who already were barred from public high schools), White helped to mount a community protest and to found the Atlanta branch of the National ...
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Source: The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
Word Count: 631(1893–1955), novelist, essayist, civil rights leader, writer and patron of the Harlem Renaissance, and executive secretary of the NAACP. The son of a mail carrier and one of seven children, Walter Francis White grew up in Atlanta on the border between white and African American neighborhoods. During the Atlanta race riots of September 1906, a white mob nearly burned down his family's home. The event was formative for White, then thirteen, inaugurating his awareness of the meaning of racial identity and influencing his subsequent political and literary careers.A 1916 graduate of Atlanta University, White worked for Atlanta's Standard Life Insurance Company until 1918, when James Weldon Johnson, then NAACP field secretary, invited him to join the NAACP staff as assistant secretary at its New York City ...
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