Roy Wilkins and the NAACP: A Life Dedicated to the Civil Rights Movemen

The life of Roy Wilkins is a story of one of the greatest civil rights leaders the United States has ever known. He was an underdog that came from poor beginnings to become a leader of the NAACP, for twenty-two years. A true example of what someone can do if they put their minds to it, no matter what color they are. To begin the journey through Roy Wilkins life, we will start with a little biographical information. Roy was born in St. Louis, Mo. On August 30, 1901, as the grandson of a slave. His mother died when he was three years old, so he and his sister were sent to live with their Aunt and Uncle in St. Paul, Mn. There they raised him in a low-income, integrated community. Although he was poor, he did attend integrated public schools in the city. After graduating high school, Roy worked his way through the University of Minnesota, where he majored in sociology and minored in journalism. He had various jobs to put himself through college. He worked as a redcap (a baggage porter), waiter, stockyard laborer, and a night editor. While in college he worked as the night editor (to help pay his way through) of the Minnesota Daily, the school paper and a black weekly, the St. Paul Appeal. After working all these odd jobs he managed to put himself through college. After graduation, he took a position as a journalist for the Kansas City Call, a black weekly paper. He stayed there for seven years, acting as managing editor from 1923 until 1931. Although the job at the Call was good, he left it in 1931 to join the NAACP as Assistant Executive Secretary, under Walter White, who was Executive Secretary at the time. In his new job, his first assignment was to investigate discrimination on a federally funded flood project in Mississippi, in 1932. Due to his findings of discrimination at that project, he was successful in getting Congress to take action to stop its practices there. After a couple of years as Whites assistant, in 1934 Wilkins seceded W. E. B. DuBois as editor of the NAACPï€ ½s magazine, the Crisis. In that same year, he suffered the first arrest of his civil rights career. During a protest at the Attorney Generalï€ ½s office in Washington, D.C., they were there protesting to get the National Conference of Crime to add ï   Lynching ï â‚¬ to their agenda of topics. He served as a consultant to the ... ...eir career after his. In a turbulent world, his non-violent means of gaining rights for blacks was a calming one. Works Cited: African-American History. ï  Roy Wilkins (1901-1981).ï â‚¬ [http://www.triadntr.net/~rdavis/wilkins.htm](Mar. 27, 2000). Altman, Susan. The Encyclopedia of African-American Heritage. New York: Facts on File, Inc.,, 1997. Collierï€ ½s Encyclopedia. New York: P. F. Collier, 1996. Encyclopedia Americana, International Version. Danbury, Conn.: Grolier Inc., 1999. Encyclopedia of Black America. ed., W. Agustus Low, ass. ed., Virgil A. Clift. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1981. Hornsby, Alton, Jr. Chronology of African American History, 2nd edition. From 1492 to the Present. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1997. Ploski, Henry A. and Williams, James. editors, The Negro Almanac, A Reference work on the African American, 5th edition. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1989. The African American Almanac, 7th edition. ed., L. Mpho Mabanda. Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1997. The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1973. The World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World Book, Inc., 2000.