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Roy Wilkins Mr Civil Rights

Roy Wilkins Mr Civil Rights The life of Roy Wilkins is a story of one of the greatest civil rights leaders the United States has ever know. 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 NAACPs magazine, the Crisis. In that same year, he suffered the first arrest of his civil rights career. During a protest at the Attorney Generals office in Washington, D.C., they were there protesting to get the National Conference of Crime to add  Lynching to their agenda of topics. He served as a consultant to the War Department in 1941 on the problems of blacks in the United States Armed Forces. In 1945, after serving the War Department as an advisor, he was a consultant to the Americans at the founding United Nations Conference, after WWII. After the unfortunate death of Executive Secretary Walter White in 1949, Wilkins assumed the position as the leader of the NAACP. Then in 1950, they named him Administrator of Internal Affairs of the NAACP. In 1964, they named him Leadership Director. Also, in 1964, Wilkins received a very prestigious award. He was presented with the NAACPs Medal for distinguished service in civil rights. In 1969, he received the Medal of Freedom from President Richard Nixon. Yet as any good thing does, it came to an end. After twenty-two years as the Executive Director, he retired from the NAACP in 1977. Then sadly, on September 8, 1981, he died in New York City at the age of eighty years old. Roy Wilkins approach to gaining civil rights for blacks was different from others of his time. Unlike some of his counterparts, he felt that blacks needed to take a nonviolent approach to gaining civil rights. He thought that student sit-ins and general civil disobedience were all right, but preferred a legal approach, with court hearings, negotiations, etc. In 1959, he publically rebuked the Monroe, N. Carolina chapter of the NAACP because of its vigorous assertion of blacks rights to self defense. He preferred passive resistance. Sometimes people wonder what would make others chose a certain job over others, and then stick with it for so long. Wilkins said that racial violence during his college years made him decide to dedicate his life work to fighting discrimination. Even though the NAACP and other black rights groups became more militant in the 1970's, he was determined to use the constitution to gain rights for blacks in American society. Wilkins felt that Black Power meant opposition to all other ethnic powers, and that all other ethnic powers were now rivals in a war that would cause violent racial clashes and wars. Roy Wilkins was a very active man. Besides his involvement in the NAACP, he also made time to be a member of many, many, worthwhile organizations, across the country. There are really too many to name them all, but here are a few. He was a trustee of the Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation and chairman, of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of many other organizations. Some include: Riverdale Childrens Association, Stockbridge School, and Peace with Freedom. Over all, Roy Wilkins dedicated his time and efforts to organizations that helped people gain their civil rights and also help to better their lives. His philosophies were quite different from other blacks of the time. To me it seems that he worded his beliefs in a way as not to offend anyone, other than the radicals, which are offended by almost everything, but at the same time making strides to equal rights for all, no matter what color they were. One of the ways that he did this was to institute policies to gain rights for blacks without alienating the white power structure. Basically trying to gain rights without upsetting the whites that were in power. Wilkins spent his entire working life fighting segregation, which is why he disliked the idea of the formation of all black facilities. He felt it would be a return to segregation, and in direct conflict of what so many blacks were fighting for in the first place. He also condemned the idea that blacks must earn their rights. He believed they did not have too because they were human rights that came from God, and their civil rights were guaranteed to them by the constitution. Mr. Wilkins has been quoted saying many things over the span of his career. Many of them still hold true today. There can be no compromise with the evil of segregation. Also at one time he said, there are more people who want to do good than do evil. When people would ask him what he did for a living, he told them he worked for Negroes. This is because he could not make himself use the term black, to degrade a race of people to just a color. He stated that, no matter how endlessly they try to explain it, the term black power means anti-white power. And that black power meant separatism and segregation from everyone else. Again, this would be a return to the very thing that blacks were fighting to get out of. Wilkins was a shrewd political strategist. He would use the facts, the legal system, and political connections, what ever it took to gain rights for blacks. He was called one of the most articulate spokesmen of the civil rights movement. Because of this, he testified at Congressional hearings, advised with the presidents, and wrote many articles, without the use of a ghost writer (someone else writing for him). All of this helped him direct the fight for equal opportunities and rights for blacks. Wilkins declared, what the Negro wants is to establish his status as a citizen . . . segregation must go. He felt that blacks should be first class citizens, just like whites. He planned and implemented ways to end segregation altogether. One of the ways he did this was by making many trips into the south. Once there, he posed as a regular black working man in order to gain evidence of racial discrimination. One of these trips almost ended in disaster. A white storekeeper saw his hands and said they were too soft to be those of a working man. He managed to get away before he was discovered. There are many other important highlights of a career such as Roy Wilkins. In 1934 he played a leading role in the organization and representation of the black interests during the transit strike of 1934 in Philadelphia. Also in 1934, Wilkins attacked the Harris committee plan saying that decentralization of the NAACP and absolute control of it by blacks only, (instead of the current interracial control) would give America a reason to identify them as radical. Also it would increase the racism received from white Americans. In the same idea of decentralization, he felt it might also lead to communist infiltration and/or become a tool for self serving individuals or politicians. He presided over the NAACPs 1954 efforts to end segregation of public schools in Brown vs. Board of Education. Wilkins describes this as his greatest satisfaction in of life, and as the beginning of the end for legalized segregation throughout the country. On June 17th, 1971, Wilkins criticized Nixon administrations policy on housing discrimination, calling it a timid tightrope walking act of the greatest kind. On this topic, he also said,  Mr. Nixon ought to stop going around saying he does not want to enforce integration of the suburbs, because he is using the language and nomenclature of those who simply do not want Negroes in the suburbs. The story of Roy Wilkins life is an inspiring one, to say the least. It takes a special kind of person to give their life to fight for a cause they believe in as much as he believed in civil rights. He is an inspiration to all aspiring activists, and should try to model their career after his. In a turbulent world, his non-violent means of gaining rights for blacks was a calming one. Bibliography: Bibliography African-American History. Roy Wilkins (1901-1981). [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. Colliers 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.

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