WILKINS, Roy

(b. 30 August 1901 in St. Louis, Missouri; d. 8 September 1981 in New York City), civil rights leader in the 1960s who was instrumental in securing voting rights for African Americans and who eventually served the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for forty-six years.

Wilkins's father, William, fled St. Louis prior to his son's birth to escape being lynched for refusing to allow his civil rights to be abused; the boy's mother, Mayfield Edmondson, died when he was four years old. Wilkins and his younger sister and brother were raised by an aunt and uncle in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in a poor, integrated neighborhood. Wilkins attended the integrated Mechanic Arts High School. After earning a B.A. in sociology, economics, and journalism in 1923 from the University of Minnesota, he joined Kansas City's African-American newspaper, the Call, as a reporter and soon became the managing editor. In 1926 he began dating Aminda "Minnie" Badeau, and they were married on 15 September 1929. Although the couple had no biological children, they raised Wilkins's brother's son.

As a journalist Wilkins's interest in writing overlapped with his participation in civil rights events and organizations. In 1931 he was appointed as the assistant executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and in 1934 he replaced W. E. B. Dubois as the editor of Crisis, the NAACP's official magazine, a position he held until 1949. He was appointed as the executive director of the NAACP in 1955.

During his long tenure in this position, Wilkins served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He and Senator Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts were the only African Americans on the commission, which was chaired by Otto Kerner, the governor of Illinois. Being a member of the commission was very important for the levelheaded and respected leader during the racial turmoil of the 1960s.

The year 1963 was a critical time for the civil rights movement, with the historic March on Washington taking place on 28 August. Wilkins initially was reluctant to participate in the march, for he feared reprisal from the administration of President John F. Kennedy, which was divided over its support. However, he joined the leadership forces of A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Whitney Young, Jr., to march for the desegregation of all public schools and better housing, legal rights, and employment opportunities for African Americans. This demonstration was larger than any in the annals of the nation's capital: more than 250,000 African Americans joined with white labor and civil rights supporters. After the march the key figures in its success, including Wilkins, were invited to the White House to meet with Kennedy to discuss and work on strategies for African-American labor to acquire equality.

A year later Wilkins's life was threatened through an anonymous letter, postmarked 5 January 1964 at Saint Petersburg, Florida, which was received at the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters in Washington, D.C. The letter stated that Wilkins, King, and Ivan Allen, the mayor of Atlanta, would be killed, as would Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who was now the president. While there were suspects, no one was ever indicted for sending the letter. Also in 1964, following riots in northern urban areas, Wilkins asked the U.S. Department of Justice to initiate a full-scale investigation, because he felt there were outside forces influencing these violent activities.

In 1967, when King spoke emphatically against U.S. participation in the war in Vietnam, Wilkins, a conservative, refused to support him. In fact, Wilkins did not want the NAACP to be part of the opposition of the war and grumbled publicly about King's stance. With this activity, as well as plans to ease racial tensions in Cleveland, Wilkins felt King was going to "stir up trouble." Wilkins believed the primary causes of urban racial friction were slums, lack of jobs, and poor public schools in the South. He felt Congress's refusal to pass open-housing legislation and civil rights bills was "creating the atmosphere" for violence.

Wilkins was steadfast about defining civil rights as an ongoing issue, whether in war or peace. By the late 1960s his belief that nonviolence would attain better results for African Americans was seemingly becoming history, however, especially with the rise of the Black Muslims and Black Panthers. Stokely Carmichael's "black power" slogan echoed throughout all civil rights activity during the turbulent, hot summer of 1966. That slogan swiftly traveled across the United States and hit every historically African-American college and university, as well as high schools and some major academic centers. The new movement was well on its way.

At the annual NAACP convention in Los Angeles on 5 July 1968, Wilkins announced that he opposed the black power concept. "No matter how endlessly they try to explain it, the term 'black power' means anti–white power.… It has to mean 'going it alone.' It has to mean separatism."

Other civil rights advocates, including the "young turks" of the NAACP, did not equate black power with black supremacy. They perceived it as a unified black platform of self-esteem in a heterogeneous society. This controversy split the organization, and many African Americans lost respect for Wilkins and the NAACP. They began to view the association as a platform for white politicians. Regardless, Wilkins was clear about his goal, which was to obliterate legal segregation throughout the United States. He stood before the Equal Opportunity in an Urban Society Subcommittee of the Republican Platform Committee in Miami on 31 July 1968 and said the nation needed a social and economic bill of rights that guaranteed basic rights for every American.

Wilkins's workable strategies and humane efforts led to national and international recognition of his contributions to the civil rights movement. In 1964 he received the NAACP's most prestigious award, the Spingarn Medal. In addition, he was awarded honorary doctorates from more than thirty institutions of higher learning throughout the United States. In 1981, just four years after retiring from the NAACP, Wilkins died of kidney failure at the age of eighty. He is buried in Farmingdale, New York.

The 1960s was a critical period for Wilkins and the civil rights movement. It was the zenith of protest, radicalism, freedom train rides, marches, and demonstrations. Wilkins, from the old school of thought, firmly believed in integration and nonviolence and was criticized for being too cautious and old-fashioned. His speeches primarily dealt with voter registration, school desegregation, and federal civil rights legislation. He was able to achieve positive results in integrating public schools, improving employment levels, gaining voting rights, and providing greater opportunities for all. Regardless of the controversy over Wilkins's ideology concerning the Black Power movement, his gentle, unwavering spirit, hope, and intellectual skills brought together a society that was in political pain and social turmoil.

Whenever Wilkins was asked for whom he worked, he always responded, "I work for Negroes." His contributions to civil rights created a progressive path to a better society.

Wilkins's papers are held by the Library of Congress. Wilkins left a large body of writing, including many articles and an autobiography, with Tom Mathews, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins (1982). For additional biographical data on Wilkins, see Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 1933–1945 (1951); Albert P. Blaustein and Robert L. Zanrendo, Civil Rights and African Americans (1968); Peter M. Bergman, Chronological History of the Negro in America (1969); Norman Coombs, The Black Experience in America (1972); Lenwood G. Davis, A Paul Robeson Research Guide (1982); Harry A. Ploski and James Williams, The Negro Almanac: A Reference Work on the African American (1989); and Leon T. Ross and Kenneth A. Mimms, African American Almanac (1997). Obituaries are in the New York Times and Washington Post (both 9 Sept. 1981)

Otis D. Alexander