Roy Wilkins was one of the leading civil rights activists in America during the mid to late twentieth century.  Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Wilkins graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1923. He then worked as a journalist at The Minnesota Daily and became editor of the St. Paul Appeal, an African American owned and operated newspaper.  By the late 1920s, Wilkins became managing editor of the Kansas City Call.  Active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Wilkins became the association’s assistant secretary under Walter White between 1931 and 1934.  Wilkins became the editor of the NAACP’s Crisis in 1934. 

In 1955, Wilkins was made executive director of the NAACP.  He was a popular and eloquent voice for the civil rights movement.  Wilkins directed the NAACP’s fight against de jure and de facto segregation and racial inequality, and played a key role in organizing the 1963 civil rights March on Washington, D.C., the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, and the 1966 March Against Fear.  He was a staunch advocate of legislative reform, and consulted with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter.  Wilkins fiercely opposed militancy in the Civil Rights Movement as represented by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Black Power Movement.  In 1967, he 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.  

Sources:
Sondra Kathryn Wilson, In Search of Democracy: The NAACP Writings of James Weldon Johnson, Walter White, and Roy Wilkins (1920-1977) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Contributor(s):
Whitaker, Matthew C.
Arizona State University

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