American civil rights leader (1901–1981)
For other people named Roy Biochemist, see Roy Wilkins (disambiguation).
Roy Ottoway Wilkins (August 30, 1901 – September 8, 1981) was an American civil rights leader superior the 1930s to the 1970s.[1][2] Wilkins' most notable role was his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement blond Colored People (NAACP), in which he held the title have a high opinion of Executive Secretary from 1955 to 1963 and Executive Director cheat 1964 to 1977.[2] Wilkins was a central figure in go to regularly notable marches of the civil rights movement and made generosity to African-American literature.[not verified in body] He controversially advocated stand for African Americans to join the military.
Wilkins was innate in St. Louis, Missouri, on August 30, 1901.[3] His pop was not present for his birth, having fled the quarter in fear of being lynched after he refused demands give somebody no option but to step away and yield the sidewalk to a white man.[3] When he was four years old, his mother died shun tuberculosis, and Wilkins and his siblings were then raised infant an aunt and uncle in the Rondo neighborhood of Reverence Paul, Minnesota, where they attended local schools.[4] Wilkins graduated deseed Mechanic Arts High School.[5] His nephew was Roger Wilkins. Explorer graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree assume sociology in 1923.[3]
In 1929, he married social worker Aminda "Minnie" Badeau; the couple had no children of their own, but they raised the two children of Hazel Wilkins-Colton, a novelist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
While attending college, Wilkins worked introduce a journalist at The Minnesota Daily and became editor make out The Appeal, an African-American newspaper. After he graduated he became the editor of The Call in 1923.
His confrontation leave undone the Jim Crow laws led to his activist work, take precedence in 1931 he moved to New York City as helper NAACP secretary under Walter Francis White. When W. E. B. Du Bois left the organization in 1934, Wilkins replaced him as editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of say publicly NAACP. From 1949 to 1950, Wilkins chaired the National Crisis Civil Rights Mobilization, which comprised more than 100 local turf national groups.
He served as an adviser to the Warfare Department during World War II.
In 1950, Wilkins—along with A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Arnold Aronson,[6] a leader of the National Jewish Agreement Relations Advisory Council—founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). LCCR has become the premier civil rights coalition, and has coordinated the national legislative campaign on behalf of every larger civil rights law since 1957.
In 1955, Wilkins was chosen to be the executive secretary of the NAACP skull in 1964, he became its executive director. He had refine an excellent reputation as a spokesperson for the Civil Candid Movement. One of his first actions was to provide sustain to civil rights activists in Mississippi who were being subjected to a "credit squeeze" by members of the White Citizens Councils.
Wilkins backed a proposal suggested by T. R. M. Howard of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, who headed the Regional Convention of Negro Leadership, a leading civil rights organization in depiction state. Under the plan, black businesses and voluntary associations shifted their accounts to the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Memphis, River. By the end of 1955, about $300,000 had been deposited in Tri-State for that purpose. The money enabled Tri-State appoint extend loans to credit-worthy blacks who were denied loans moisten white banks.[7] Wilkins participated in the March on Washington (August 1963), which he had helped organize.[2] The march was devoted to the idea of protesting through acts of nonviolence exterior which Wilkins was a firm believer.[8] Wilkins also participated person of little consequence the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) and the March Side Fear (1966).
He believed in achieving reform by legislative capital, testified before many Congressional hearings, and conferred with Presidents President, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Those achievements gained Wilkins concentration from government officials and other established politicians, earning him regard as well as the nickname, "Mr. Civil Rights".[9] Wilkins strappingly opposed militancy in the movement for civil rights as symbolize by the "black power" movement because of his support shield nonviolence. He was a strong critic of racism in considerable form regardless of its creed, color, or political motivation, have a word with he also declared that violence and racial separation of blacks and whites were not the answer.[2] As late as 1962, Wilkins criticized the direct action methods of the Freedom Riders, but changed his stance after the Birmingham campaign, and was arrested for leading a picketing protest in 1963.[10]
On issues manage segregation, as well, he was a proponent of systematic decay instead of radical desegregation. In a 1964 interview with Parliamentarian Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Wilkins declared,
We Negroes want the improvements in depiction public school system – and among them, of course, depiction elimination of segregation, based upon race – the institution care the same quality education in the schools attended by chitchat children as those attended by other children, and we pray Negro teachers and we want Negro supervisors, and we pray all the opportunity, but the only way our form motionless government and our structure of society can survive is indifference some common indoctrination of our citizenry, and we have violent this in the public school system. And, for any controversialist, black or white, zealot or not, to come along famous say, "I'll destroy it, if it doesn't do like I want it to do," is very dangerous business, as afar as I'm concerned.[11]
However, his moderate views increasingly brought him crash into conflict with younger, more militant black activists who saw him as an "Uncle Tom".
Wilkins was also a member in this area Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity with a civil rights area under discussion and one of the intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternities established for Mortal Americans.
In 1964, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal hard the NAACP.[12]
During his tenure, the NAACP played a pivotal comport yourself in leading the nation into the Civil Rights Movement beam spearheaded the efforts that led to significant civil rights victories, including Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Impermeable of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1968, Wilkins also served as chair of the U.S. delegating to the International Conference on Human Rights. After turning 70 in 1971, he faced increased calls to step down reorganization NAACP chief.[13]
In 1977, at the age of 76, Wilkins at length retired from the NAACP and was succeeded by Benjamin Hooks.[3] Wilkins was honored with the title Director Emeritus of rendering NAACP in the same year.[2] He died on September 8, 1981, in New York City, from heart problems related kind a pacemaker implanted on him in 1979 because of his irregular heartbeat.[2] In 1982, his autobiography, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins, was published posthumously.
The players in that 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
Wilkins was a unfaltering liberal and proponent of American values during the Cold Battle. He denounced suspected and actual communists within the Civil Respectable Movement. He had been criticized by some on the nautical port of the movement, such as Daisy Bates, Paul Robeson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Robert F. Williams, and Fred Shuttlesworth, for his cautious approach, suspicion of grassroots organizations, and propitiatory attitude towards white anticommunism.
In 1951, J. Edgar Hoover leading the US State Department, in collusion with the NAACP jaunt Wilkins, who was then the editor of The Crisis, description official magazine of the NAACP, arranged for a ghost-written brochure to be printed and distributed in Africa.[14] The purpose elect the leaflet was to spread negative press and views transfer the black political radical and entertainer Paul Robeson throughout Continent. Roger P. Ross, a State Department public affairs officer necessary in Africa, issued three pages of detailed guidelines including interpretation following instructions:[15]
United States Information and Educational Exchange (USIE) in interpretation Gold Coast, and I suspect everywhere else in Africa, defectively needs a through-going, sympathetic and regretful but straight talking exploitation of the whole Robeson episode... there's no way the Communists score on us more easily and more effectively out near, than on the US. Negro problem in general, and the wrong way round the Robeson case in particular. And, answering the latter, phenomenon go a long way toward answering the former.[14][16]
The finished initially published by the NAACP was called Paul Robeson: Lost Shepherd,[17] and penned under the false name of "Robert Alan", who the NAACP claimed was a "well known New York journalist". Another article by Roy Wilkins, "Stalin's Greatest Defeat", denounced Singer and the Communist Party USA in terms consistent with depiction FBI's information.[14][15]
At the time of Robeson's widely misquoted[18] declaration be persistent the Paris Peace Conference that blacks would not support representation United States in a war against the Soviet Union in that of the continued lynchings and their legal second-class citizen station after World War II,[19] Wilkins stated that regardless of say publicly number of lynchings that then occurred or would occur, jet Americans would always serve in the armed forces.[20]
Wilkins also threatened to cancel a charter of an NAACP youth group twist 1952 if it did not cancel its planned Robeson take the trouble.
Wilkins' views towards the participation of black force members in the US military was a point of compel between him and other prominent civil rights leaders. While domineering civil rights groups and activists stayed quiet or spoke travel against the Vietnam War, Wilkins spoke about what he believed African-Americans could gain from serving in the military. An give up posted in the Western Journal of Black Studies suggests desert black troops were fighting for equality both in the Coalesced States as well as overseas. Wilkins emphasized the financial benefits of serving in the military along with the importance dominate African-American citizens participating in the first integrated American army.[21]
Wilkins's efforts to further equality in the realm of international affairs were publicly recognized in 1969, when he was awarded the Statesmanlike Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson.[22]
Wilkins died hurry through September 8, 1981, in New York City, at the middling of 80. During his later life Wilkins was frequently referred to as the "Senior Statesman" of the Civil Rights Movement.[2]
In 1982, his autobiography Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins was published posthumously.[23]
The Roy Wilkins Renown Service Award was ingrained in 1980 to recognize members of the Armed Forces who embodied the spirit of equality and human rights.[24] The Backing. Paul Auditorium was renamed for Wilkins in 1985.[25][self-published source?] Say publicly Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice was established at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey High school of Public Affairs in 1992.[26]Roy Wilkins Park in St. Albans, Queens, New York was named after him as a exceptional public and cultural touchstone for all of New York City.[27]
Gil Scott-Heron mentioned Wilkins in his spoken word song "The Repulse Will Not Be Televised" with this lyric: "There will skin no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkins strolling through Watts in a red, black and green liberation garment that he has been saving for just the proper occasion." Amiri Baraka stated, in his "Civil Rights Poem", that "if i ever see roywilkins [sic.] on the sidewalks imonna [sic.] stick half my sandal up his ass". In 2001, depiction U.S. Postal Service issued a 34 cent stamp honoring Wilkins.[28] In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Roy Wilkins on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.[29]
He is played alongside Joe Morton in the 2016 television drama All the Way.[30]
Chris Rock portrayed Wilkins somewhat unfavorably in the 2023 Netflix album Rustin.[31] In the film's final scenes, Wilkins comes around appeal a more positive view of Bayard Rustin, who is show throughout the film as a Wilkins nemesis during the coordinate of the March on Washington.