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Walter White and the Atlanta NAACP's Fight for Equal Schools, 1916–1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Edgar A. Toppin
Edgar A. Toppin*
Affiliation:
Virginia State College
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Extract

In 1917 a delegation of negroes went before the Board of Education in Atlanta, Georgia, to demand equal facilities for colored school children. This marked the beginning of the work in Atlanta of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The youthful branch secretary who sparked this drive, Walter Francis White, called this “our first fight and our first victory and … we have only begun to fight.” Despite his enthusiasm, Atlanta moved at a glacial pace toward parity in the dual school systems.

Type
The Negro and Education I
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 1967 , pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 History of Education Quarterly 

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References

Notes

1. Walter White to James Weldon Johnson, February 22, 1917, No. 2, NAACP Branch Files, Atlanta, 1913–1931, NAACP Archives, Library of Congress. White's two letters to Johnson that day (before 3:oo and after 5:00) are designated No. 1 and No. 2 herein. Unless otherwise noted, all materials cited from the NAACP Archives come from the Atlanta file box, 1913–1931.Google Scholar

2. Walter White, A Man Called White (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1948), p. 30; White to Roy Nash, March 3, 1917, NAACP Archives. Nash was the NAACP national secretary; James Weldon Johnson was the field secretary.Google Scholar

3. W. E. Burghardt DuBois (ed.), The Negro Common School Atlanta University Publication No. 6 (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1901), p. 87; DuBois and Augustus G. Dill (eds.), The Common School and the Negro American, Atlanta University Publication No. 16 (Atlanta: Atlanta University Press, 1911), pp. 7, 137.Google Scholar

4. Dorothy Orr, A History of Education in Georgia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950), p. 317; Georgia School Reports, 1917, p. 439; Georgia School Reports, 1918, p. 7.Google Scholar

5. DuBois, Negro Common School, p. 18.Google Scholar

6. Henry R. Hunter, “The Development of the Public Secondary Schools of Atlanta, Georgia” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, George Peabody College for Teachers, 1937), pp. 9, 12, 16, 19-23, 62-63; Asa H. Gordon, The Georgia Negro, A History (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Edwards Brothers, 1937), pp. 151-52; Walter G. Cooper, Official History of Fulton County (Atlanta: Walter W. Brown, 1934), pp. 33, 449-53. Atlanta is in Fulton County.Google Scholar

7. Gordon, Georgia Negro, pp. 152-53; Superintendent Slaton's report as quoted in Richard R. Wright, A Brief Historical Sketch of Negro Education in Georgia (Savannah: Robinson, 1894), pp. 34-35.Google Scholar

8. Hunter, “Development of Secondary Schools of Atlanta,” p. 63.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., pp. 23–27, 64; Cooper, Official History of Fulton County, pp. 451-53.Google Scholar

10. DuBois and Dill, Common School and Negro, pp. 127-28.Google Scholar

11. John F. Slater Fund, Proceedings and Reports for the Year Ending September 30, 1917 (n.p., n.d.), p. 42; Horace Mann Bond, The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1934), pp. 206, 296.Google Scholar

12. Louis R. Harlan, Separate and Unequal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958), pp. 216, 227; Amanda Johnson, Georgia: As Colony and State (Atlanta: Walter W. Brown, 1938), p. 925.Google Scholar

13. White to Johnson, September 27, 1917, NAACP Archives; Amanda Johnson, Georgia, p. 925.Google Scholar

14. Harlan, Separate and Unequal, pp. 10, 35-36.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

16. DuBois, Negro Common School, pp. 88-91; DuBois and Dill, Common School and Negro, pp. 120-26.Google Scholar

17. Georgia General Assembly, House Journal, 1917, p. 662. The governor's message was dated July 25, 1917.Google Scholar

18. Harlan, Separate and Unequal, pp. 210-12, 239-40, 245; Orr, History of Education in Georgia, p. 316.Google Scholar

19. Harlan, Separate and Unequal, pp. 211-12; United States Bureau of the Census, Negro Population, 1790–1915 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), pp. 388-89; United States Bureau of the Census, Negroes in the United States, 1920–1932 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1935), pp. 54-55.Google Scholar

20. DuBois and Dill, Common School and Negro, pp. 62-63.Google Scholar

21. Ray S. Baker, Following the Color Line (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1964), pp. 52-53. Originally published in 1908. DuBois and Dill, Common School and Negro, p. 63.Google Scholar

22. Orr, History of Education in Georgia, p. 319.Google Scholar

23. Harlan, Separate and Unequal, p. 263; DuBois and Dill, Common School and Negro, pp. 61-63.Google Scholar

24. Mary White Ovington, The Walls Came Tumbling Down (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., 1947), pp. 100-8; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1933), p. 310; NAACP, Eighth and Ninth Annual Reports for the Years 1917 and 1918 (New York: NAACP National Office, January 1919), inside back cover (p. 95).Google Scholar

25. W. R. Scott to DuBois, September 30, 1913; reply to Scott, October 8, 1913; John Hope to May Childs Nerney, January 27, 1915; Nerney to J. P. Barbour, January 30, February 24, 1915; White to DuBois, September 7, 1915; Nerney to White, September 13, 1915, NAACP Archives. W. E. B. DuBois was Director of Publicity and Research for the national NAACP; May Nerney worked in the national office.Google Scholar

26. Nerney to White, September 13, 1915; White to Nash, December 16, 1916; Nash to White, December 19, 1916; Johnson to White, December 21, 1916; White to Johnson, January 5, 1917 [mistakenly dated as 1916]; White to Nash, February 3, 1917, NAACP Archives; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way, pp. 308-9, 314-16.Google Scholar

27. White to Nash, December 16, 1916, February 3, 1917; White to Johnson, February 22, 1917, No. 1, NAACP Archives; White, A Man Called White, pp. 29-30; Hunter, “Development of Secondary Schools of Atlanta,” pp. 49-50, 61.Google Scholar

28. Constitution (Atlanta), February 23, 1917, p. 8; White, A Man Called White, pp. 30-31.Google Scholar

29. White to Johnson, February 22, 1917, No. 2, NAACP Archives; “Asa Griggs Candler” in Dictionary of American Biography, III, 470-71.Google Scholar

30. White to Nash, March 3, 1917, NAACP Archives; White, A Man Called White, pp. 31-32.Google Scholar

31. Constitution (Atlanta), February 23, 1917, p. 8; Journal (Atlanta), February 23, 1917, p. 4.Google Scholar

32. White to Johnson, February 22, 1917, No. 2; White to Johnson, March 3, 1917; White to Nash, March 28, 1917 (telegram); Pace to Nash, March 26, 1917; Nash to White, May 19, 1917, NAACP Archives; Minutes, Board of Directors, January 2, February 13, March 12, April 9, 1917, NAACP Archives (in box labelled Board Minutes, National NAACP).Google Scholar

33. White to Nash, March 19, 1917; White to Nash, April 12, 1917; White to Johnson, April 19, 1917, NAACP Archives.Google Scholar

34. Printed Letter, from Atlanta branch to membership, n.d., NAACP Archives.Google Scholar

35. White to Nash, May 9, 1917; White to Johnson, September 27, 1917, NAACP Archives; White, A Man Called White, pp. 32-33.Google Scholar

36. Constitution (Atlanta), September 8, 1917, p. 6.Google Scholar

37. White to Johnson, September 27, 1917, NAACP Archives; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way, pp. 319-20; Who Was Who in America, I, 1897-1942, p. 596.Google Scholar

38. Constitution (Atlanta), September 28, 1917, p. 8; White to Johnson, September 27, October 1, 1917, NAACP Archives.Google Scholar

39. Constitution (Atlanta), September 28, 1917, p. 8.Google Scholar

40. Johnson to White, October 4, 1917, NAACP Archives.Google Scholar

41. White, A Man Called White, pp. 34-37; Johnson, Along This Way, pp. 316-17, 329; Ovington, Walls Came Tumbling, p. 148; White to Johnson, December 5, 1917; Johnson to Pace, December 12, 1917; Pace to Johnson, January 4, 1918; Johnson to Pace, January 18, 1918; White to Pace, April 22, 1918; Pace to White, June 22, 1918; Johnson to Pace, June 29, 1918; White to John R. Shillady, July 19, 1918, NAACP Archives. Shillady succeeded Roy Nash as NAACP Secretary (1918-1920), to be succeeded in turn by Johnson (1920-1931), White (1931-1955), and Roy Wilkins (since 1955) as NAACP Executive Secretary.Google Scholar

42. NAACP, Tenth Annual Report … for the Year 1919 (New York: NAACP National Office, 1920), p. 72; White, A Man Called White, p. 33; Constitution (Atlanta), March 5, 1918, p. 7; March 6, 1919, p. 1; March 7, 1919, pp. 1, 4; March 18, 1919, p. 1.Google Scholar

43. Franklin M. Garrett, Atlanta and Environs, (3 vols.; New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1954), II, 756; White, A Man Called White, p. 38; NAACP, Tenth Annual Report, p. 72.Google Scholar

44. Constitution (Atlanta), March 1, 1921, pp. 1, 10; March 6, 1921, p. 7A; March 9, 1921, pp. 1, 16; Garrett, Atlanta, II, 779, 795-96; Hunter, “Development of Secondary Schools of Atlanta,” pp. 66-68, 70-72.Google Scholar

45. Fred McCuistion, “Financing Schools in the South” (Nashville, Tennessee: Directors of Educational Research for Southern States, 1930), p. 16.Google Scholar

46. Walter White, How Far the Promised Land? (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1955), pp. 47, 58-62; DuBois and Dill, Common School and Negro, p. 133.Google Scholar