|
Walter Francis White (July 1, 1893 – March 21, 1955) was an American civil rights activist who led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for almost a quarter of a century and directed a broad program of legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist. He graduated in 1916 from Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University), a historically black college. In 1918 he joined the small national staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New York at the invitation of James Weldon Johnson. He acted as Johnson's assistant national secretary and traveled to the South to investigate. White later succeeded Johnson as the head of the NAACP, leading the organization from 1931 to 1955. White oversaw the plans and organizational structure of the fight against public segregation. He worked with President Truman on desegregating the armed forces after the Second World War and gave him a draft for the Executive Order to implement this. Under White's leadership, the NAACP set up the Legal Defense Fund, which raised numerous legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement, and achieved many successes. Among these was the Supreme Court ruling in ''Brown v. Board of Education'' (1954), which determined that segregated education was inherently unequal. White also quintupled NAACP membership to nearly 500,000.〔(William Jelani Cobb, "Past Imperfect: Post Mfume" ), Afro-Netizen.com〕 ==Early life and education== White was the fourth of seven children born in Atlanta to George W. White (b.1857) and Madeline (Harrison) White (b.1863). Among the new middle class of blacks, George and Madeline, both born into slavery, ensured that Walter and each of their children got an education. When Walter was born, George had attended Atlanta University and became a postal worker, an admired position in the federal government.〔Dyja, Tom. ''Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America'', Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008. Print. P 12〕 Madeline graduated from Clark Atlanta University and became a teacher. She had been briefly married before in 1879 to Marshall King, who died the same year.〔 The White family belonged to the influential First Congregational Church, founded after the Civil War by freedmen and the American Missionary Association, based in the North. Of all the black denominations in Georgia, the Congregationalists were among the most socially, politically and financially powerful.〔Dyja, Tom. ''Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America''. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008. Print. P 12〕 Membership to First Congregational was the ultimate status symbol in Atlanta.〔 Of mixed race with African and European ancestry on both sides, White had features showing his European ancestry. He emphasized in his autobiography, ''A Man Called White'' (p. 3): "I am a Negro. My skin is white, my eyes are blue, my hair is blond. The traits of my race are nowhere visible upon me." Of his 32 3xgreat-grandparents, five were black and the other 27 were white. All members of his immediate family had fair skin, and his mother Madeline was also blue-eyed and blonde.〔(Walter White, ''A Man Called White'' )〕 The oral history of his mother’s family is that her maternal grandparents were Dilsia, a slave and concubine, and her master William Henry Harrison. He had six children with her. Much later he was elected as president of the United States. Madeline's mother Marie Harrison was one of Dilsia's mixed-race daughters by Harrison. Held as a slave in La Grange, Georgia, where she had been sold, Marie became a concubine to Augustus Ware. This wealthy white man bought her a house, had four children with her, and passed on some wealth to them.〔Kenneth Robert Janken, ''Walter White: Mr. NAACP'', Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, pp.2-4.〕 White and his family identified as Negro and lived among Atlanta's Negro community. George and Madeline took a kind but firm approach in rearing their children, encouraging hard work and regular schedules.〔Dyja (2008), ''Walter White'', p. 121〕 In his autobiography, White relates that his parents ran a strict schedule on Sundays; they locked him in his room for silent prayer, a time so boring that he all but begged to do homework. His father forbade Walter from reading any books less than 25 years old, so he chose to read Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope by the time he was 12.〔Dyja (2008), ''Walter White'', p. 18〕 When he was 8, he threw a rock at a white child who called him a derogatory name for drinking from the fountain reserved for Blacks.〔 Events such as this shaped White's self-identity. He began to develop skills to pass for white, a device he used later to preserve his safety as a civil rights investigator for the NAACP in the South.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Walter Francis White」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|