American Experience, Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP
PBS WESTERN RESERVE (WNEO 45.1 / WEAO 49.1):
Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 9 PM
Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 2 AM
As the story is usually told, the civil rights movement began in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus. In fact, the stage had been set decades before, by activists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who braved the appalling violence and oppression of the Jim Crow era. Some of their names are familiar: W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall. They all played prominent roles in the NAACP, the preeminent civil rights organization of the era. But Walter White — arguably the most influential Black man in mid-century America and the leader of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955 — has been all but forgotten. This documentary traces the life of this neglected civil rights hero and seeks to explain his disappearance from our history.