Season 37

While many mark 1955 as the birth of the civil rights movement—the year Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on an Alabama bus—the stage for change was set decades earlier by NAACP activists. Among the organization’s most recognizable figures are W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall, yet Walter White, who led the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, has largely faded from memory. With blond hair and blue eyes, White appeared white, and he described himself as an enigma—a Black man in a white body. Like most light-skinned African Americans of his era, White descended from enslaved Black women and influential white men; nonetheless, he identified as Black by law, by identity, and by conviction, dedicating his life to advancing Black civil rights. Forgotten Hero: Walter White and the NAACP traces this overlooked civil rights champion’s life and explores why his name vanished from history.