Roy Wilkins
|
Roy Wilkins as the Executive Secretary of the NAACP in 1963 |
Roy Wilkins (
August 30,
1901 –
September 8,
1981) was a prominent
civil rights activist in the
United States from the 1930s to the 1970s. Wilkins was active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (
NAACP) and between 1931 and 1934 was assistant NAACP secretary under
Walter Francis White. When
W. E. B. Du Bois left the organization in 1934, Wilkins replaced him as editor of
Crisis, the official magazine of the
NAACP.
Born in
St. Louis, Missouri, Wilkins graduated from the
University of Minnesota with a degree in
sociology in 1923. He worked as a
journalist at
The Minnesota Daily and became editor of
St. Paul Appeal, an
African-American newspaper. After he graduated he became the editor of the
Kansas City Call. In
1929 he married
social worker Aminda "Minnie" Badeau; the couple had no children.
In 1955, Wilkins was named executive director of the NAACP. He had an excellent reputation as an articulate spokesperson for the civil rights movement. One of his first actions was to provide support to civil rights activists in Mississippi who were being subject to a "credit squeeze" by members of the
White Citizens Councils.
Wilkins backed a proposal suggested by Dr.
T.R.M. Howard of
Mound Bayou, Mississippi who headed the
Regional Council of Negro Leadership, a leading civil rights organization in the state. Under the plan, black businesses and voluntary associations shifted their accounts to the black-owned
Tri-State Bank of Memphis, Tennessee. By the end of 1955, about $280,000 had been deposited in Tri-State for this purpose. The money enabled Tri-State to extend loans to credit-worthy blacks who were denied loans by white banks.
Wilkins participated in the
March on Washington (1963), the
Selma to Montgomery marches (1965), and the
March Against Fear (1966).
He believed in achieving reform by legislative means; he testified before many
Congressional hearings and conferred with Presidents
Kennedy,
Johnson,
Nixon,
Ford, and
Carter. Wilkins strongly opposed militancy in the movement for civil rights as represented by the "
black power" movement.
In 1967, Wilkins was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson. During his tenure, the NAACP led the nation into the Civil Rights movement and spearheaded the efforts that led to significant civil rights victories, including
Brown v. Board of Education, the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1977, at the age of 76, Wilkins retired from the NAACP and was succeeded by
Benjamin Hooks. He died
September 9, 1981. In
1982 his autobiography
Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins was published posthumously.
The Roy Wilkins Centre for Human Relations and Human Justice [
1] was established in the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs in 1992.
The players in this drama of frustration and indignity are not commas or semicolons in a legislative thesis; they are people, human beings, citizens of the United States of America.:-Roy Wilkins
In 1977, at the age of 76, Wilkins retired from the NAACP and was succeeded by
Benjamin Hooks. He died
September 9, 1981. In
1982 his autobiography
Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins was published posthumously.
*
Roger Wilkins, his nephew, another prominent Civil Rights activist.
*Arvarh E. Strickland. "Wilkins, Roy"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000
*David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito,
T.R.M. Howard: Pragmatism over Strict Integrationist Ideology in the Mississippi Delta, 1942-1954 in Glenn Feldman, ed.,
Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (2004 book), 68-95.
*David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito,
T.R.M. Howard, M.D.: A Mississippi Doctor in Chicago Civil Rights, AME Church Review 67 (July-September 2001), 51-59.
*
The Roy Wilkins Memorial in
St. Paul, Minnesota: a virtual tour.
