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Roy Ottoway Wilkins (August 30, 1901 – September 8, 1981) was an American civil rights leader from the 1930s to the 1970s., Spartacus Educational website, UK Wilkins' most notable role was his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in which he held the title of Executive Secretary from 1955 to 1963 and Executive Director from 1964 to 1977. Wilkins was a central figure in many notable marches of the civil rights movement and made contributions to African-American literature. He controversially advocated for African Americans to join the military.
In 1929, he married social worker Aminda "Minnie" Badeau; the couple had no children of their own, but they raised the two children of Hazel Wilkins-Colton, a writer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
His confrontation of the Jim Crow laws led to his activist work, and in 1931 he moved to New York City as assistant NAACP secretary under Walter Francis White. When W. E. B. Du Bois left the organization in 1934, Wilkins replaced him as editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP. From 1949 to 1950, Wilkins chaired the National Emergency Civil Rights Mobilization, which comprised more than 100 local and national groups.
He served as an adviser to the War Department during World War II.
In 1950, Wilkins—along with A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Arnold Aronson,
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Founders Civilrights.org. a leader of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council—founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). LCCR has become the premier civil rights coalition, and has coordinated the national legislative campaign on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957.
Wilkins backed a proposal suggested by T. R. M. Howard of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, a leading civil rights organization in the state. Under the plan, black businesses and voluntary associations shifted their accounts to the black-owned Tri-State Bank of Memphis, Tennessee. By the end of 1955, about $300,000 had been deposited in Tri-State for that purpose. The money enabled Tri-State to extend loans to credit-worthy blacks who were denied loans by white banks. Wilkins participated in the March on Washington (August 1963), which he had helped organize. The march was dedicated to the idea of protesting through acts of nonviolence in which Wilkins was a firm believer."Roy Wilkins" Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia 6th Edition 2019. Wilkins also participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) and the March Against Fear (1966).
He believed in achieving reform by legislative means, testified before many Congressional hearings, and conferred with Presidents Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. Those achievements gained Wilkins attention from government officials and other established politicians, earning him respect as well as the nickname, "Mr. Civil Rights".Lusted, Marcia Amidon, Cobblestone, Vol. 35, Issue 2, February 2019. Wilkins strongly opposed militancy in the movement for civil rights as represented by the "black power" movement because of his support for nonviolence. He was a strong critic of racism in any form regardless of its creed, color, or political motivation, and he also declared that violence and racial separation of blacks and whites were not the answer. As late as 1962, Wilkins criticized the direct action methods of the Freedom Riders, but changed his stance after the Birmingham campaign, and was arrested for leading a picketing protest in 1963.
On issues of segregation, as well, he was a proponent of systematic integration instead of radical desegregation. In a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Wilkins declared,
However, his moderate views increasingly brought him into conflict with younger, more militant black activists who saw him as an "Uncle Tom".
Wilkins was also a member of Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity with a civil rights focus and one of the intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternities established for African Americans.
In 1964, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP. NAACP Spingarn Medal
During his tenure, the NAACP played a pivotal role in leading the nation into the Civil Rights Movement and spearheaded the efforts that led to significant civil rights victories, including Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In 1968, Wilkins also served as chair of the U.S. delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights. After turning 70 in 1971, he faced increased calls to step down as NAACP chief.
In 1977, at the age of 76, Wilkins finally retired from the NAACP and was succeeded by Benjamin Hooks. Wilkins was honored with the title Emeritus in the same year. He died on September 8, 1981, in New York City, from heart problems related to a pacemaker implanted on him in 1979 because of his irregular heartbeat. In 1982, his autobiography, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins, was published posthumously.
In 1951, J. Edgar Hoover and the US State Department, in collusion with the NAACP and Wilkins, who was then the editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, arranged for a ghost-written leaflet to be printed and distributed in Africa.Foner, Henry (2001). Paul Robeson: A Century of Greatness, The Paul Robeson Foundation, pp. 112–115. The purpose of the leaflet was to spread negative press and views about the black political radical and entertainer Paul Robeson throughout Africa. Roger P. Ross, a State Department public affairs officer working in Africa, issued three pages of detailed guidelines including the following instructions:Duberman, Martin. Paul Robeson, 1989, p. 396.
United States Information and Educational Exchange (USIE) in the Gold Coast, and I suspect everywhere else in Africa, badly needs a through-going, sympathetic and regretful but straight talking treatment of the whole Robeson episode... there's no way the Communists score on us more easily and more effectively out here, than on the US. Negro problem in general, and on the Robeson case in particular. And, answering the latter, we go a long way toward answering the former.American Consul, Accra. 179. January 9, 1951, USIE: Request for Special Story on Paul Robeson declassified October 19, 1979.
The finished article published by the NAACP was called Paul Robeson: Lost Shepherd,Duberman, Martin. Paul Robeson, 1989, p. 395. and penned under the false name of "Robert Alan", who the NAACP claimed was a "well known New York journalist". Another article by Roy Wilkins, "Stalin's Greatest Defeat", denounced Robeson and the Communist Party USA in terms consistent with the FBI's information.
At the time of Robeson's widely misquotedDuberman, Martin. Paul Robeson, 1989, pg 358. declaration at the Paris Peace Conference that blacks would not support the United States in a war against the Soviet Union because of the continued lynchings and their legal second-class citizen status after World War II,Foner, Phillip. Paul Robeson Speaks, 1978, p. 197. Wilkins stated that regardless of the number of lynchings that then occurred or would occur, black Americans would always serve in the armed forces.Wilkins, Roy. Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins, p. 200–205.
Wilkins also threatened to cancel a charter of an NAACP youth group in 1952 if it did not cancel its planned Robeson concert.
Wilkins's efforts to further equality in the realm of international affairs were publicly recognized in 1969, when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson.
In 1982, his autobiography Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins was published posthumously.
The Roy Wilkins Renown Service Award was established in 1980 to recognize members of the Armed Forces who embodied the spirit of equality and human rights. The St. Paul Auditorium was renamed for Wilkins in 1985. The Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice was established at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in 1992. Roy Wilkins Park in St. Albans, Queens, New York was named after him as a unique public and cultural touchstone for all of New York City.
Gil Scott-Heron mentioned Wilkins in his spoken word song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" with this lyric: "There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkins strolling through Watts in a red, black and green liberation jumpsuit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion." Amiri Baraka stated, in his "Civil Rights Poem", that "if i ever see roywilkins sic. on the sidewalks imonna sic. stick half my sandal up his ass". In 2001, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 34 cent stamp honoring Wilkins. In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Roy Wilkins on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans.Asante, Molefi Kete (2002). 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, New York: Zeus Books. .
He is played by Joe Morton in the 2016 television drama All the Way.
Chris Rock portrayed Wilkins somewhat unfavorably in the 2023 Netflix film Rustin. In the film's final scenes, Wilkins comes around to a more positive view of Bayard Rustin, who is portrayed throughout the film as a Wilkins nemesis during the planning of the March on Washington.
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