Roy Wilkins

• Born: August 30, 1901
• Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
• Died: September 8, 1981
• Place of death: New York, New York

Activist

Wilkins was involved in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for fifty years, twenty-two as the organization’s influential executive secretary. He helped to secure passage of most of the major civil rights bills of the twentieth century and orchestrated the legal campaign that culminated with the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Areas of achievement: Civil rights; Government and politics; Law; Social issues

Early Life

Roy Wilkins was born on August 30, 1901, to William and Mayfield Wilkins in St. Louis, Missouri. When Wilkins was four years old, his mother died of tuberculosis, and his father sent him and his younger siblings to live with their aunt and uncle in St. Paul, Minnesota. The move proved fortuitous for Wilkins as it afforded him a chance to grow up in amid considerable ethnic diversity in community in which race was not paramount. As a high school student, he edited the school newspaper, and he remembered facing little overt discrimination.

Wilkins’s experience in Minnesota gave him a glimpse of the benefits afforded in a color-blind society. He would remain a champion of integration for the rest of his life. In 1919, Wilkins enrolled in the University of Minnesota, where he majored in sociology and minored in journalism. He worked low-paying odd jobs in order to subsidize his education.

Upon graduating in 1923, Wilkins found employment with the prominent black newspaper The Kansas City Call, which enjoyed statewide circulation. While in Missouri, he felt the sting of racial prejudice for the first time. Segregation governed social interaction in the city as well as the state, a fact that compelled the young Wilkins to join the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), thus beginning his decades-long affiliation with the group. Wilkins wrote increasingly assertive editorials for The Call that urged African Americans to exercise their right to vote and challenge the entrenched authority that upheld Missouri’s segregation statutes. The 1930 defeat of staunch segregationist U.S. Senator Henry Allen was considered a direct result of Wilkins’s campaign. Wilkins’s effectiveness brought him to the attention of the head of the NAACP, Walter White. He was about to set out on a career path that would make him one of the most important civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, placing him at the forefront of the drive for racial equality.

In 1931, Wilkins found himself working directly with White at the NAACP headquarters in New York. His first major assignment required him to travel to Mississippi, where he served as an undercover operative, earning ten cents a day constructing federally subsidized levees, risking his life in pursuit of justice. The eye-opening experience prompted Wilkins to write a 1932 report titled “Mississippi Slave Labor,” in which he revealed the brutal oppression faced by the project’s employees. Wilkins’s report reached Washington, D.C., prompting Congress to help the levee workers suffering under the brutal conditions typically experienced by African Americans in the South.

Life’s Work

In 1934, Wilkins became the editor of the NAACP’s national news magazine, The Crisis. He also continued his active work on behalf of the NAACP, keeping a busy speaking schedule and championing the group’s numerous causes. When White fell ill in 1949, Wilkins temporarily filled his post until White’s return. After White’s death in 1955, the NAACP’s board of directors made Wilkins the group’s executive secretary. The organization that Wilkins now commanded had made itself the voice of black America. Wilkins, like White before him, believed in bringing about racial equality through well-established channels. The organization challenged the constitutionality of segregation and all of its satellite institutions through the legal system, hoping that the Supreme Court would rule such laws unconstitutional and Congress would enact legislation to right historic wrongs against African Americans.

During the 1920’s and 1930’s, the NAACP sought legislation to make lynching a federal crime. Wilkins was at the center of the campaign that culminated in legislative defeat. Despite the failure, he had faith in the long-term success of the movement to thwart lynching, for although a bill never passed, the publicity that the NAACP brought to the crime fostered national outrage and encouraged southern states to work toward curtailing the crime. Lynchings decreased dramatically even without the passage of federal legislation.

For Wilkins, the message was clear: Slow and steady effort produced victory. This lesson was reinforced in 1954 when the Supreme Court issued its verdict in Brown v. Board of Education, which represented the culmination of an ongoing legal challenge orchestrated by the NAACP. Much to Wilkins’s delight, the court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, thus establishing a precedent that undermined the sanctity of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling upon which all segregation statutes rested. It was a major victory for the organization and for the cause of racial justice, but it did not produce change overnight. Instead, many white southerners embraced the doctrine of “massive resistance,” vowing to fight the Brown ruling with all lawful means at their disposal. The backlash set the stage for a showdown over segregation; Wilkins and the NAACP found themselves in the middle of a firestorm.

The slow process of school integration and the continued injustices perpetrated in the name of segregation prompted the emergence of the Civil Rights movement. Across the South, African Americans took to the streets in protest. New leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference emerged and took some of the spotlight away from the NAACP. Wilkins supported the endeavors of rival organizations and often orchestrated activities in concert with them. The famous 1963 March on Washington, for example, was brought about in part by the efforts of Wilkins.

Aware of the power of propaganda from his earliest days with the NAACP, Wilkins recognized that anything that shed light on the horrors of segregation was a positive, whether he received credit for it or not. Behind the scenes, Wilkins pressed the fight against segregation on both the state and national levels. His calm, moderate approach to the nation’s racial problems made him a favorite of politicians, who regularly called on him to use his influence in the African American community to urge restraint among the demonstrators. Wilkins figured prominently in all of the major legislative battles over civil rights during the 1950’s and 1960’s, from the unsatisfactory Civil Rights Act of 1957 to the sweeping Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the deeply fulfilling Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As legislative victories mounted, some African Americans rallied to the Black Nationalist movement, a development that Wilkins, who had always championed an integrated America, could not bear and often criticized. This stance led some to condemn Wilkins as being out of touch with the movement. As the 1970’s dawned, membership in the NAACP fell, as did support for Wilkins’s leadership. In 1977, Wilkins officially stepped down as the head of the NAACP, but he remained active in the cause of racial justice until his death in 1981.

Significance

Wilkins was one of America’s preeminent civil rights leaders in the twentieth century, despite being overshadowed by more outspoken members of the movement. He adopted a behind-the-scenes approach that might have garnered less attention, but still brought about many important advances for African Americans. A longtime member and leader of the NAACP, he was involved in the antilynching crusade of the 1930’s, the anti-poll-tax battles of the 1940’s, and the drive for the eradication of all forms of discrimination during the 1950’s and 1960’s. His patient strategy brought success with the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision and the equally significant civil rights legislation in the subsequent decade.

Wilkins’s impressive credentials, coupled with his tone of moderation, made him a trusted adviser for many politicians as they attempted to grapple with the civil rights crusade. During the 1970’s, Wilkins criticized the administrations of presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford for threatening to turn back the clock on the advances made in previous decades. He continued the fight for an integrated America, including supporting controversial busing programs as a means of redressing racial imbalances in public schools.

Bibliography

Finley, Keith M. Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938-1965. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008. Chronicles the legislative battle over civil rights to which Wilkins devoted much of his career as a member of the NAACP.

Gilmore, Glenda. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. Offers key context for Wilkins’s earlier career by exploring the wide array of interests that made up the modern civil rights crusade that he joined and helped to shape.

Sugrue, Thomas J. Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2009. Explores the battle for racial justice above the Mason-Dixon Line and highlights the schism within the civil rights community that ultimately threatened Wilkins’s leadership.

Sullivan, Patricia. Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: New Press, 2009. This is the first major history of the NAACP. It covers the organization before, during, and after Wilkins’s tenure.

Wilkins, Roy, and Tom Matthews. Standing Tall: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994. First-person account of the political strategy and internal workings of the NAACP under the leadership of Wilkins.