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There is an attitude that exists in far too many white racists that manifests itself as the belief that they still have the right, lawful or otherwise, to hunt down and kill black people in the United States of America and then call it something other than what it is.
"Walter Francis White helped the NAACP document the truth about lynchings in America. The fact that he could pass as caucasian came in very handy.
Story by A. M. Brune · Edited by Genelle Levy · 5.28.20
On a hot September day in 1919, Walter Francis White found himself running for his life.
In the two days since he had been in Elaine, Arkansas, White had seen the bodies of dozens of black men and women strewn across dirt roads. The ones who were lucky enough to still be alive remained hiding in the cotton fields.
White ducked down an alley, then picked up speed along the railroad tracks. Breathless and weary, he reached the station and climbed onto the platform just as the conductor announced the final call for the doors.
As recounted in White’s autobiography, A Man Called White, the conductor gave White an odd look before asking him why he was leaving before the fun began. “There’s a damned yellow ****** down here passing for white,” the conductor explained. “When they get through with him, he won’t pass for white no more!” he cackled.
What the conductor didn’t know was that the last-minute passenger he was talking to was in fact the very man he was talking about. White later wrote in his autobiography, “No matter what the distance, I shall never take as long a train ride as that one seemed to be.” When he finally set foot back in New York, his colleagues at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sighed with great relief.
Walter White is one of the most important yet overlooked civil rights leaders of the 20th century. He played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance and led the NAACP to its zenith as its executive secretary. But what makes White stand out is the unusual method he used to achieve racial justice. His biggest secret? He was a biracial man who passed for white in order to help the NAACP investigate some of the greatest racial atrocities in post-Reconstruction America, helping to establish the organization as a veracious force for African-American justice and liberty.
In 1919, White was on assignment in Arkansas investigating the Elaine Massacre: the state-sanctioned murder of dozens of black sharecroppers under the order of Arkansas Governor Charles Brough. At the time, the Arkansas farming industry was dominated by white landowners, and black sharecroppers — frustrated by low wages — had formed the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. That September, the union met in a local church to discuss an upcoming lawsuit against white landowners, but their meeting was interrupted by gunfire from white vigilantes. The sharecroppers returned fire in self-defense. A white security officer was killed, and the town’s deputy sheriff was wounded.
The body of a black person slain during the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas in 1919. (Photo courtesy the Arkansas History Commission)
When the news reached the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock, Brough declared the event an insurrection. He called up 500 Arkansas National Guard soldiers from Camp Pike and instructed them to kill any black person who refused to surrender immediately. More than 200 African-Americans were murdered and an additional 200 were tortured and imprisoned. A century later, the Elaine Massacre remains the bloodiest occurrence of racial violence in Arkansas history and one of the deadliest in U.S. history as well.
Sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas, being rounded up by troops and taken to a detention area, after they formed a union that was seen as a threat to white farmers. (Photo courtesy the Arkansas History Commission)
White traveled to Arkansas to advocate for those imprisoned sharecroppers. He planned to meet with the local sheriff and report back to the NAACP. But it was not safe for a black man to freely roam around Arkansas. So White devised a plan. He obtained fake press credentials through personal contacts, and impersonated a Chicago Daily News reporter, hoping everyone would assume he was white.
But right before his meeting with the sheriff, his plan backfired.
As White recounted in his memoir, while he was walking down the street, he was overtaken by a black man who whispered, “Mister … I don’t know what you are down here for, but I just heard them talking about you — I mean the white folks — and they say they are going to get you.” With that warning, White started sprinting to the train station and never looked back."
Continued here:
The Black Investigator Who Went Undercover as a White Man in the Jim Crow South
"Walter Francis White helped the NAACP document the truth about lynchings in America. The fact that he could pass as caucasian came in very handy.
Story by A. M. Brune · Edited by Genelle Levy · 5.28.20
On a hot September day in 1919, Walter Francis White found himself running for his life.
In the two days since he had been in Elaine, Arkansas, White had seen the bodies of dozens of black men and women strewn across dirt roads. The ones who were lucky enough to still be alive remained hiding in the cotton fields.
White ducked down an alley, then picked up speed along the railroad tracks. Breathless and weary, he reached the station and climbed onto the platform just as the conductor announced the final call for the doors.
As recounted in White’s autobiography, A Man Called White, the conductor gave White an odd look before asking him why he was leaving before the fun began. “There’s a damned yellow ****** down here passing for white,” the conductor explained. “When they get through with him, he won’t pass for white no more!” he cackled.
What the conductor didn’t know was that the last-minute passenger he was talking to was in fact the very man he was talking about. White later wrote in his autobiography, “No matter what the distance, I shall never take as long a train ride as that one seemed to be.” When he finally set foot back in New York, his colleagues at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sighed with great relief.
Walter White is one of the most important yet overlooked civil rights leaders of the 20th century. He played a key role in the Harlem Renaissance and led the NAACP to its zenith as its executive secretary. But what makes White stand out is the unusual method he used to achieve racial justice. His biggest secret? He was a biracial man who passed for white in order to help the NAACP investigate some of the greatest racial atrocities in post-Reconstruction America, helping to establish the organization as a veracious force for African-American justice and liberty.
In 1919, White was on assignment in Arkansas investigating the Elaine Massacre: the state-sanctioned murder of dozens of black sharecroppers under the order of Arkansas Governor Charles Brough. At the time, the Arkansas farming industry was dominated by white landowners, and black sharecroppers — frustrated by low wages — had formed the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. That September, the union met in a local church to discuss an upcoming lawsuit against white landowners, but their meeting was interrupted by gunfire from white vigilantes. The sharecroppers returned fire in self-defense. A white security officer was killed, and the town’s deputy sheriff was wounded.
The body of a black person slain during the Elaine Massacre in Arkansas in 1919. (Photo courtesy the Arkansas History Commission)
When the news reached the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock, Brough declared the event an insurrection. He called up 500 Arkansas National Guard soldiers from Camp Pike and instructed them to kill any black person who refused to surrender immediately. More than 200 African-Americans were murdered and an additional 200 were tortured and imprisoned. A century later, the Elaine Massacre remains the bloodiest occurrence of racial violence in Arkansas history and one of the deadliest in U.S. history as well.
Sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas, being rounded up by troops and taken to a detention area, after they formed a union that was seen as a threat to white farmers. (Photo courtesy the Arkansas History Commission)
White traveled to Arkansas to advocate for those imprisoned sharecroppers. He planned to meet with the local sheriff and report back to the NAACP. But it was not safe for a black man to freely roam around Arkansas. So White devised a plan. He obtained fake press credentials through personal contacts, and impersonated a Chicago Daily News reporter, hoping everyone would assume he was white.
But right before his meeting with the sheriff, his plan backfired.
As White recounted in his memoir, while he was walking down the street, he was overtaken by a black man who whispered, “Mister … I don’t know what you are down here for, but I just heard them talking about you — I mean the white folks — and they say they are going to get you.” With that warning, White started sprinting to the train station and never looked back."
Continued here:
The Black Investigator Who Went Undercover as a White Man in the Jim Crow South
