07/01/2008

"Mulattoes" in the NAACP and Supreme Court

According to Carl Degler:
It is not accidental that many of the great leaders of Negro organizations in the United States have been mulattoes, men like Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Whitney Young, Walter White, John Hope, Adam Clayton Powell, and Roy Wilkins. In Brazil such men would have been sorely tempted to ignore their connection with other blacks and use the mulatto escape hatch for their individual advancement. Indeed one might say that the great potential leaders of blacks in Brazil have all escaped through the hatch, to their own improvement, but to the loss of Negroes in general (Neither Black nor White, 1971 edition, p. 183).

Thurgood Marshall poses with the two principal officers of the NAACP: Walter White, the national secretary, center, and Roy Wilkins, the assistant national secretary.

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