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 a quarter of a century, from 1929 until 1955. He directed a broad program of legal challenges to racial segregation and disfranchisement. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist.
White first joined the NAACP in 1918, at the invitation of James Weldon Johnson, the NAACP's Executive Secretary. As Johnson's assistant he traveled to the South to investigate lynchings and race riots. Being light-skinned, he was able to pass as white to facilitate his investigations and protect himself in tense situations.
White succeeded Johnson as the head of the NAACP in an acting capacity in 1929, taking over officially in 1931, and led the organization until his death in 1955. White led the NAACP in campaigning for a federal law against lynching, to bar employment discrimination in defense industries during World War II, and to end the segregation of the armed forces after the war. Under White's leadership, the NAACP set up its Legal Defense Fund, which conducted 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 confronted a number of challenges, both internal and external, to his and the NAACP's strategies for achieving civil rights for African Americans. White also saw NAACP membership quintuple to nearly 500,000 during his leadership.
