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Roy Wilkins
Longtime leader of the NAACP
The steady hand who steered the NAACP through the civil-rights movement's greatest decades.
The rise
A journalist and organizer, Wilkins rose through the NAACP to lead it from 1955 to 1977, guiding the country's largest civil-rights organization.
What they did
He backed the legal and legislative strategy behind Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, and helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, favoring coalition-building and the courts over confrontation.
The full picture
His moderate, institutional approach drew fire from younger Black Power activists who saw it as too cautious for the urgency of the moment.
Why it matters
Wilkins provided the organizational backbone that translated protest into landmark law.
“Regardless of the fact that in his later years Dr. Du Bois chose another path, it is incontrovertible that at the dawn of the twentieth century his was the voice that was calling to you to gather here today in this cause.”