Roy Wilkins

Roy Wilkins was born on 30th August, 1901 in St.Louis, USA. He died on the 9th September 1981.
He was a prominent civil rights activist in the USA during from the 1930' to the 1970's.
He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in sociology in 1923. He worked as a journalist and became editor of St. Paul Appeal, an African American newspaper.
From 1934 to 1949 he edited Crisis, the official magazine for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP. In 1955, Wilkins was named executive director of the NAACP, he had an excellent reputation as an articulate spokesperson for the civil rights movement.
He was a believer in legislative reform, and testified before many Congressional hearings and conferred with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter.
Wilkins strongly opposed militancy in the movement for civil rights as represented by the "black power" movement of Stokely Carmichael and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
In 1977, at the age of 76, Wilkins retired from the NAACP. He wrote his autobiography, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins, in 1982.