{"id":16988,"date":"2011-10-12T05:40:54","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T05:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=16988"},"modified":"2011-10-15T20:29:15","modified_gmt":"2011-10-15T20:29:15","slug":"the-awareness-of-walter-white","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=16988","title":{"rendered":"The Awareness of Walter White"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Awareness of Walter White<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Land Press<\/a>
\nOkiecentric<\/a>
\n2011-05-05<\/p>\n

Adrian Margaret Brune<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I grew up in Tulsa<\/a>, but was raised knowing next to nothing about the Race Riot of 1921<\/a>. Though I considered myself educated when I left for Northwestern University at the age of 18 in 1994, I had never taken a black history course, nor ventured over to Greenwood to hear jazz and blues. Four years later, while attending Columbia Journalism School in New York, I came home and learned about the journalist and civil rights activist Walter White<\/a>. In May of 2002, just over 80 years after White investigated Tulsa\u2014one of his last riots\u2014I loaded up my car in Brooklyn<\/a> and drove across America to trace his footsteps.<\/p>\n

When Walter White, then 28 years old, came to Tulsa in late June of \u201921, he had already experienced a lifetime of racial dilemmas, ensconced within the pigment of his skin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalter White\u2019s parents were enslaved; his parents were black. They maintained a presence in Atlanta\u2019s black community, though they could have made a decision to pass up that hardship and pass<\/a> as white,\u201d said Kenneth Janken<\/a>, author of White: The Biography of Walter F. White, Mr. NAACP<\/a><\/em>. \u201cHe was not conflicted by their choice, or ultimately his. He formed a chapter of the NAACP<\/a> and he chose a job investigating race riots when he could have done quite well as insurance salesman.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

The ascension of Walter Francis White from the inquisitive schoolboy who tailed his father during his afternoon postal routes, to the NAACP\u2019s preeminent riot investigator seemed a natural one. That metamorphosis began on Sept. 22, 1906\u2014the first day of the Atlanta Race Riot<\/a>. That day was the first day White would understand that, despite his alabaster skin, he was black..<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Awareness of Walter White The Land Press Okiecentric 2011-05-05 Adrian Margaret Brune I grew up in Tulsa, but was raised knowing next to nothing about the Race Riot of 1921. Though I considered myself educated when I left for Northwestern University at the age of 18 in 1994, I had never taken a black […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,20],"tags":[7791,7790,7789,7788,6786,1929],"class_list":["post-16988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-usa","tag-adrian-brune","tag-adrian-m-brune","tag-adrian-margaret-brune","tag-the-land-press","tag-walter-francis-white","tag-walter-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}