Walter White: Civil rights leader who investigated lynchings

Walter Francis White was a prominent civil rights leader who spent over three decades transforming the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) into a powerful force against racial discrimination and violence.

Born in Atlanta in 1893 to parents who had been enslaved, White possessed light skin, blond hair, and blue eyes, allowing him to pass as white. He utilized this ability to conduct dangerous undercover investigations into lynchings and race riots. By entering communities where Black investigators would have faced immediate peril, he gathered evidence from witnesses and law enforcement to expose the brutality of lynching.

White personally investigated 41 lynchings and eight race riots, often having to flee for his life when his identity was discovered. His work provided the NAACP with critical evidence to campaign for federal anti-lynching legislation and informed his 1929 book, ‘Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch’.