use of language make her fiction almost indistin-
guishable from her poetry (Madgett, 773).
White has received several awards, including
the African World Festival of Arts and Culture
Lagos’s Nigeria Creative Writing Award (1976);
the Michigan Council for the Arts Creative Artists
Award/Grant (1984), the State of Michigan 82nd
Legislature Special Tribute Award (1984); the
Black Women in Michigan Recognition Award,
Resource/Study Guide, Detroit Historical Depart-
ment (1985); and the Women’s Recognition Award,
sponsored by the Focus on Women Program at
Henry Ford Community College (2000).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Madgett, Naomi Long. “White, Paulette Childress.”
In The Oxford Companion to African American
Literature, edited by William L. Andrews, Frances
Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, 772–773. New
York: Oxford, 1997.
“Paulette Childress White.” In Black-Eyed Susans/
Midnight Birds, edited by Mary Helen Washing-
ton, 35–53. New York: Anchor, 1990.
“White, Paulette Childress (1948– ).” In Contempo-
rary Authors. Vol. 111, edited by Hal May, Diane L.
Dupuis, Lillian S. Sims, and Susan M. Trosky, 508.
Detroit: Gale, 1984.
Loretta G. Woodward
White, Walter Francis (1893–1955)
As a blond-haired, blue-eyed, lightskinned man
of African-American descent, the author and po-
litical activist Walter White could have lived within
the white community; instead, he chose to iden-
tify himself as African-American. In his autobi-
ography, A Man Called White (1948), he describes
his moment of racial identification at 13, when a
white mob threatened his home during the 1906
Atlanta race riot. “I knew then who I was,” White
explains; “I was a Negro, a human being with an
invisible pigmentation which marked a person to
be hunted, hanged, abused, discriminated against,
kept in poverty and ignorance, in order that those
whose skin was white would have readily at hand
a proof of their superiority” (11). White’s fam-
ily and house narrowly escaped the violence, but
the memory of that night shaped White’s lifelong
commitment to racial justice.
White’s work for the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR
THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE (NAACP)
largely overshadows his literary reputation. His po-
litical activism began shortly after his graduation
from Atlanta University, when he protested cuts in
the funding of Atlanta’s black public schools. The
successful protest brought him to the attention
of JAMES WELDON JOHNSON, field secretary of the
NAACP, who convinced White to leave his job as
an insurance salesman and join the fledgling orga-
nization’s New York headquarters in 1918. White
spent the rest of his life working for the NAACP,
serving as executive secretary from 1931 until his
death in 1955. During his tenure with the NAACP,
White investigated dozens of lynchings and race
riots. Relying on his light skin, he infiltrated white
communities (narrowly escaping being lynched
himself at least once) and collected and delivered
evidence to newspapers and prosecutors in a tire-
less effort to shed light on the atrocities plaguing
America. As executive secretary he advised gen-
erals, senators, and presidents on racial justice.
White received the Spingarn Medal in 1937 for his
civil rights work.
In the literary circle of the HARLEM RENAIS-
SANCE, White had the reputation as a man who
could get things published. If his activism over-
shadowed his literary career during his lifetime,
his role as a facilitator for other African-American
authors has tended, in retrospect, to overshadow
his literary production as well. He established con-
nections with some of the most influential white
publishers, critics, authors, and patrons of his day,
including Alfred A. Knopf, Horace Liveright, H. L.
Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, and CARL VAN VECHTEN.
White used these connections to aid many emerg-
ing authors of the Harlem Renaissance: LANGSTON
HUGHES, CLAUDE MCKAY, COUNTEE CULLEN, GEOR-
GIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON, NELLA LARSEN, RUDOLPH
FISHER, and others.
White’s own literary career began in 1922,
when Mencken encouraged him to write a novelWhite, Walter Francis 547