Walter White (1893-1955), American civil rights leader and writer. Walter Francis White was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and educated at Atlanta University. Appointed assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1918, he thereafter investigated race riots and lynchings and championed victims of racial injustice. He was executive secretary of the association from 1931 until his death. President Franklin D. Roosevelt drew upon the experience of White and the NAACP when he established a fair employment practices committee in 1941. In 1945 White acted as consultant to the U.S. delegation at the organizational meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco. He wrote the novel Fire in the Flint (1924) and an autobiography, A Man Called White (1948).