{"id":63009,"date":"2022-02-09T03:15:23","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T03:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=63009"},"modified":"2022-02-09T03:21:02","modified_gmt":"2022-02-09T03:21:02","slug":"a-man-called-white-and-exploring-americas-darkest-secret-in-white-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=63009","title":{"rendered":"A Man Called White and Exploring America\u2019s Darkest Secret in \u201cWhite Lies\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Man Called White and Exploring America\u2019s Darkest Secret in \u201cWhite Lies\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Chicago Review of Books<\/a>
\n2022-02-07<\/p>\n

Steve Nathans-Kelly<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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

An interview with A.J. Baime<\/a> about his new book, “White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret<\/a>.”<\/em><\/p>\n

When we speak of the peak years of the Civil Rights Movement<\/a>, typically we refer to the period beginning with Brown v. Board of Education<\/em><\/a> in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott<\/a> of 1955-56\u2014which thrusted Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/a> onto the national stage. This canonical era concludes with the passage of the Voting Rights Act<\/a> in August 1965 following the pivotal showdown in Selma<\/a>. Those eleven years formed the Movement\u2019s dominant narrative, which blurred and obscured most of what came before and after (and oversimplified much that\u2019s in between).<\/p>\n

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall\u2019s<\/a> landmark 2005 essay, \u201cThe Long Civil Rights Movement and the Uses of the Past<\/a>,\u201d ushered in a critical reassessment of these artificial historical boundaries. Hall argued that anointing this era not only limited the movement\u2019s lifespan to a \u201chalcyon decade,\u201d but also narrowed its goals to the pursuit of a vaguely defined \u201ccolor-blind\u201d society, a notion later used to recast King and others as proponents of neoliberal social and fiscal policy.<\/p>\n

Focusing exclusively on this period also meant overlooking many of the foundational figures who preceded it and laid the groundwork for nearly everything that followed.<\/p>\n

One such figure is Walter F. White<\/a>\u2014known in his lifetime as \u201cMr. NAACP\u201d\u2014who led America\u2019s most powerful civil rights organization from 1929 until his death in 1955. White featured prominently in nearly every important battle against segregation<\/a> and white supremacy during those years. White\u2019s extraordinary life demonstrates how blinding white Americans\u2019 appalling lack of color-blindness could be.<\/p>\n

By all appearances, the blond-haired and blue-eyed Walter White was white. But like his multiracial parents, both born to formerly enslaved people, White identified as Black throughout his life. In his early years with the NAACP<\/a>, he used his appearance to infiltrate<\/a> Southern white communities as an undercover white man, gathering critical information on brutal lynchings<\/a> from killers keen to brag about their crimes…<\/p>\n

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

An interview with A.J. Baime about his new book, “White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,459,13743,8,6462,23674,20],"tags":[32839,32965,899,2708,32964,28260,6786,1929],"class_list":["post-63009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-history","category-interviews","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-social-justice","category-usa","tag-a-j-baime","tag-chicago-review-of-books","tag-naacp","tag-national-association-for-the-advancement-of-colored-people","tag-steve-nathans-kelly","tag-walter-f-white","tag-walter-francis-white","tag-walter-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63009","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=63009"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63011,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63009\/revisions\/63011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}