How A Civil Rights Leader Risked His Life to Investigate Lynchings

Fresh Air

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4.4 • 34.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

White Lies author A.J. Baime tells the story of Walter White, a light-skinned Black man whose ancestors had been enslaved. For years White risked his life investigating racial violence in the South.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Fresh Air.
0:01.4	I'm Dave Davies and Frateri Gross, who's off this week.
0:05.3	When lynchings and other violence against black people were a regular occurrence in the
0:09.3	first half of the 20th century, details of many of those crimes were reported by an
0:13.8	intrepid mixed race investigator with blue eyes and straight hair who could move with ease
0:19.0	among rural white communities.
0:21.6	His name was Walter F. White, and he worked for the NAACP in its early years, eventually
0:26.8	becoming chief executive of the organization.
0:29.9	His executive secretary, White, developed legal strategies to fight discrimination and recruited
0:35.0	top litigators for the effort, including future Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall.
0:40.6	White also built the political power of the NAACP, becoming a regular visitor to the White
0:45.8	House, and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Intrument Administration's winning important changes
0:51.2	in federal policy.
0:53.2	Our guest journalist and author AJ Bame tells the story of Walter White in a new biography.
0:58.8	He explains that while White was known and admired by millions of black people across
1:03.0	the country in his day, his legacy and influence were in the end diminished by a secret in his
1:08.3	personal life that would undermine his authority within the NAACP.
1:13.4	AJ Bame is the author of five previous books, including Dewey Defeats Truman and the accidental
1:18.6	president.
1:19.7	His latest is White Lies, the double life of Walter F. White and America's darkest secret.
1:26.4	AJ Bame, welcome to Fresh Air.
1:29.2	Walter White grew up in Atlanta.
	...

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