Walter F. White

(1893 - 1955)

Walter Francis White served as executive secretary of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, after serving eleven years there as an investigator. During his work investigating lynchings and organized racial violence, White would sometimes use the fact that he could pass for white to gain entrée into white enclaves and to protect himself from harm during his inquiries. In 1929, reflecting on over a decade of lynching investigations, White remarked that “nothing contributes so much to the continued life of an investigator of lynchings and his tranquil possession of all his limbs as the obtuseness of the lynchers themselves. Like most boastful people who practice direct action when it involves no personal risk, they just can’t help talk about their deeds to any person who manifests even the slightest interest in them.”