Walter F. White:  “U.S. Department of (White) Justice”

Impact

White was clearly skeptical that the Department of Justice would suddenly reverse its stance on lynching, but he firmly believed that the campaign against mob violence depended on publicity and propaganda. Every piece of literature he produced was meant to turn up the heat on government officials by increasing the public outcry against lynching. By the end of the 1930s, this undeniable public indignation forced antilynching legislation onto the congressional agenda despite President Roosevelt’s ambivalence and southern politicians’ opposition. Yet while public attitudes toward lynching had changed dramatically, powerful opposition to federal legislation remained; despite the intensive antilynching campaign waged by the NAACP, southern senators remained opposed to a federal antilynching law. When the Democratic senators Frederick Van Nuys and Robert Wagner introduced a new bill in January 1938, southern senators filibustered for nearly seven weeks straight. Like every antilynching bill before and since, the Wagner–Van Nuys bill failed in the face of southern opposition.

While Congress never passed an antilynching bill, the spotlight that White and his allies fixed on the problem of mob violence yielded tangible results. In addition to mobilizing public sentiment against lynching, White’s relentless pressure forced government officials to take their first halting steps toward combating racial violence. In 1939 the Department of Justice set up a Civil Liberties Unit, which was renamed the Civil Rights Section two years later. In 1942 the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the first time dispatched agents to the site of a lynching—that of Cleo Wright in Sikeston, Missouri. Roosevelt’s successor, Harry Truman, believed that lynching was not only a moral outrage but also a diplomatic nightmare for the United States. Convinced that racial violence weakened the country’s prestige and influence in the world, Truman made the elimination of lynching a cornerstone of his unprecedented civil rights program in 1948. Southern senators continued to thwart such legislation, but the isolated lynchings of the 1950s and 1960s drew global condemnation and even resulted in a few federally assisted criminal convictions. Walter White did more than any other activist to bring about this slow but significant transformation in public attitudes toward mob violence. No single person was more influential in making lynching a national political issue, and articles like “U.S. Department of (White) Justice” were a crucial part of White’s crusade.