Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America: Library of African American Biography Thomas Dyja Ivan R. Dee

Walter White

The Dilemma of Black Identity in America

Walter White

The Dilemma of Black Identity in America

Description

The day Walter White was buried in 1955 the New York Times called him "the nearest approach to a national leader of American Negroes since Booker T. Washington." For more than two decades, White, as secretary of the NAACP, was perhaps the nation's most visible and most powerful African-American leader. He won passage of a federal anti-lynching law, hosted one of the premier salons of the Harlem Renaissance, created the legal strategy that led to Brown v. Board of Education, and initiated the campaign demanding that Hollywood give better roles to black actors. Driven by ambitions for himself and his people, he offered his entire life to the advancement of civil rights in America.

Chapter 1: A World of His Own
Chapter 2: The Life Insurance Temperament
Chapter 3: Undercover Against Lynching
Chapter 4: At the Center of the Harlem Renaissance
Chapter 5: Conflict, Control, and the Making of Mr. NAACP
Chapter 6: Fighting on All Fronts
Chapter 7: "I am white and I am black"

Product details

Published	Sep 18 2008
Format	Ebook (Epub & Mobi)
Edition	1st
Extent	224
ISBN	9781566638159
Imprint	Ivan R. Dee
Series	Library of African American Biography
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

In prose that moves effortlessly across the page, Thomas Dyja captures the energy and accomplishments of Walter White, one of the most important and effective African American leaders of the last century.

Kenneth Robert Janken, author of Walter White: Mr. NAACP
Walter White, the longtime executive secretary of the NAACP, is one of the most complex and yet fascinating characters of the black freedom struggle. While many historians have dismissed White as an opportunistic self-promoter, Thomas Dyja's elegantly written biography provides the reader with an empathetic and judicious portrait of a man who was passionately devoted to the cause of racial advancement but as an individual aspired to move beyond the limitations of race.

Manfred Berg, Curt Engelhorn Professor of American History, Heidelberg University
Thomas Dyja's gripping biography of Walter White has restored an essential American life. With impeccable research, acute sensitivity and literary grace, Dyja has restored one of the most important links in the long chain of events and causes that brought Americans, at long last, into the the bright sunshine of civil and human rights.

Ted Widmer, author of Ark of the Liberties
Dyja's crisply-written biography is a fascinating, concise history of arguably the most effective civil rights leader of his time. Dyjas's timely and nimble effort identifies the gap between one person's proximity to power and a community's failure to ever actualize it-a dilemma that continues to plague civil rights leaders and by extension black America today. As the inaugural text for this new series, Walter White is an auspicious beginning for The Library of African American Biography, which will crucially introduce and familiarize future generations of readers to the most important people of the African American experience.

Devin Fergus, author of Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965–1980
Compact, insightful . . . [an] able tribute to a boundary-smashing activist.

Kirkus Reviews
Dyja brings new light to an eclipsed but hugely important figure in the civil rights struggle.

Booklist