Roy Wilkins: The Right to Dignity

ARC Identifier 2546045 / Local Identifier 306.289. This moving image reviews the career of Black activist Roy Wilkins with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP.). It outlines the growth and impact of the organization, including its role in the 1954 Brown v. the Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court and the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s. U.S. Information Agency. (1982 - 10/01/1999) Made possible by a donation from Greg Grossmeier

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Education

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• archives.gov
• public.resource.org

[JRM733]

@pushups2345 Roy Wilkins stated that regardless of the number of lynchings that were occurring or would occur, Black America would always serve in the armed forces. Wilkins also threatened to cancel a charter of an NAACP youth group in 1952 if they did not cancel their planned Robeson concert.

So....brave or not, the man was ghost writing for J Edgar Hoover against Black American citizens. It's hard to find dignity in that.

[JRM733]

@pushups2345 Another article by Roy Wilkins, called "Stalin's Greatest Defeat", denounced Robeson as well as the Communist Party of the USA in terms consistent with the FBI's information. Robeson's crime? He basically said (but was widely misquoted), at The Paris Peace Conference in 1949, that African Americans would not support the U.S. in a war with the Soviet Union because of their continued lynchings and second-class citizen status under law following World War II.

[JRM733]

@pushups2345 But here's where Wilkins comes in. In 1951, J. Edgar Hoover and the state department, in collusion with the NAACP (and Roy Wilkins, editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP), arranged for a ghost-written leaflet to be printed and distributed in Africa. The finished article published by the NAACP was called Paul Robeson: Lost Shepherd, penned under the false name of "Robert Alan", whom the NAACP claimed was a "well known New York journalist."

[JRM733]

@pushups2345 At the height of his career, Paul Robeson chose to become a political artist. In 1950, Robeson's passport was revoked under the McCarran Act over his work in the anti-imperialism movement and what the U.S. State Department called Robeson's "frequent criticism while abroad of the treatment of blacks in the US." Under heavy and daily surveillance by both the FBI and the CIA[ and publicly condemned for his beliefs.

[JRM733]

@pushups2345 Paul Leroy Robeson (April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an American bass-baritone concert singer, recording artist, athlete and actor who became noted for his political radicalism and activism in the civil rights movement. The son of an escaped slave, Robeson was the first major concert star to popularize the performance of Negro spirituals and was the first black actor of the 20th century to portray Shakespeare's Othello on Broadway.[

[JRM733]

@pushups2345 No offense, but I wish you hadn't added your comment. I was already having enough trouble with an entire 20 minutes of praise for this man and after all, he's dead, but enough is enough. I didn't want to say anything more than that I was glad that there was a video. But to imply that he saved the free world and all Black people from any potential communist uprising is just silly.

[rlcope45]

@pushups2345 Mr. Wilkins believed in the value of goodness. I grew up listening to him speak on those rare occasions when they would show him. He is so under-rated as a leader.

[pushups2345]

@rlcope45 he was also very brave.

he refused to work with the communists because he knew that, while claimed they were for african americans, they were really trying to stir up anti-americanism among them. that is why he refused to work with people like paul robeson and stokley carmichael, and it is because of roy wilkins that their plans for creating violent insurrection and separatism failed to gain significant following

[rlcope45]

What a great American was Mr. Roy Wilkins!!! I shall never forget him