Reference
- Wilkins, Roy(born Aug. 30, 1901, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.—died Sept. 8, 1981, New York, N.Y.) U.S. civil-rights leader. He was a reporter for the African American-owned Kansas City Call and later became its managing editor. He joined the staff of the NAACP (1931) and became editor (1934–49) of its official publication, The Crisis. In 1955 he began a 22-year tenure as executive director of the NAACP, which he set on a course of seeking equal rights through legal redress. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, and he served as chairman of the U.S. delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights in 1968.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Perspectives
Roy Wilkins
Roy Wilkins (1901--1981) spent forty-six years of his life serving the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and led the organization for more than twenty years. Under his leadership, the NAACP spearheaded efforts that contributed to landmark civil rights legislation, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act. In Roy Wilkins: The Quiet Revolutionary and the NAACP, Yvonne Ryan offers the first biography of this influential activist, as well as an analysis of his significant contributions to civil rights in America. While activists in Alabama were treading the highways between Selma and Montgomery, Wilkins was walking the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., working tirelessly in the background to ensure that the rights they fought for were protected through legislation and court rulings. With his command of congressional procedure and networking expertise, Wilkins was regarded as a strong and trusted presence on Capitol Hill, and received greater access to the Oval Office than any other civil rights leader during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Roy Wilkins fills a significant gap in the history of the civil rights movement, objectively exploring the career and impact of one of its forgotten leaders. The quiet revolutionary, who spent his life navigating the Washington political system, affirmed the extraordinary and courageous efforts of the many men and women who braved the dangers of the southern streets and challenged injustice to achieve equal rights for all Americans.
Standing Fast
History will remember Roy Wilkins (1901-1981) as one of the great leaders of the twentieth century for his contributions to the advancement of civil rights in America. For nearly half a century--first as assistant secretary, also succeeding W. E. B. Dubois as editor of The Crisis, and finally succeeding Walter White as executive director--Roy Wilkins served and led the N.A.A.C.P. in their fight for justice for African Americans.
Wilkins was a relentless pragmatist who advocated progressive change through legal action. He participated or led in the achievement of every major civil rights advance, working for the integration of the army, helping to plan and organize the historic march on Washington, and pushing every president from Franklin Roosevelt to Jimmy Carter to implement civil rights legislation. This is a dramatic story of one man's struggle for his people's rights, as well as a vivid recollection of the events and the people that have shaped modern black history.
Introduction by Julian Bond
Desegregation
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
The Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional in the Brown v. the Board of Education ruling. Roy Wilkins assumed leadership of the NAACP. Rosa Parks was arrested, fueling the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The Big Six
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowJohn Lewis describes the background of the Big Six civil rights leaders, Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young.
A Lot of Dead to Carry Home
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowRoy Wilkins, head of the NAACP, challenged the state's version of the shootings, saying there was no exchange of gunfire; the students were unarmed. Some felt that police opening fire on unarmed students was unthinkable in America.
Online Resources
- Black Civil Rights and Liberal Anticommunism: The naacp in the Early Cold WarThe struggle of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to support the cause of black civil rights when it embraced liberal anticommunism in the early Cold War era is discussed.
- Roy WilkinsRoy Wilkins began his long association with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1931. At first, he served as the editor of the NAACP's magazine, the Crisis. Then he became the executive secretary in 1955. By 1964, he was the executive director. He guided the organization in its struggle against racial inequality.
- Roy WilkinsThe funeral for Roy Wilkins was an ecumenical service shared by three Protestant clergymen, a rabbi and the Cardinal Archbishop of New York. No rite could have been more fitting, for Roy Wilkins was much more than a civil rights activist; he was a builder of unity in American society as a whole. When he died on Sept. 8 at the age of 80 he had spent more than a half a century working for one of the best of causes in the best of ways.
- Roy WilkinsHis grandfather was a slave, and his father tended a brick kiln. He worked at turns as a redcap, a dishwasher, a Pullman-car waiter and a cleanup man in a St. Paul slaughterhouse. But since 1931, when Roy Wilkins joined the staff of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, his name has been synonymous with the nation's oldest and largest civil-rights organization. His tenure, from 1955 to 1977, as the NAACP's chief executive embraced the era of greatest progress for black Americans. Though he lacked the magnetism of Martin Luther King Jr. or the fire of Stokely Carmichael, he quietly made an enduring contribution to the cause of equal rights, embodying the will of the majority of black citizens to work within the system. When he died last week in New York City of kidney failure,just after llis 80th birthday, he left behind a landscape of broken barriers and a lifetime in the fight for integration-against the recalcitrant South and, later, against the forces of separatism within his own race.