Scope and Content Note
The papers of Roy Wilkins (1901-1981) span the years 1901-2001, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period 1932-1980. Included are a diary, correspondence, memoranda, appointment books, minutes, reports and other administrative records, speeches and writings, printed matter, and miscellaneous material. Although the papers reflect several aspects of Wilkins's career as a journalist and civil rights leader, their focus is largely on his role as an administrator in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he began as assistant to the secretary in 1931 and served as acting secretary, administrator, executive secretary, and executive director between 1949 and 1977.
Family letters in the Correspondence series in the collection consist largely of letters between Roy Wilkins and his wife, Aminda Badeau Wilkins, and with their nephew, Roger W. Wilkins. General correspondence spans the years 1939-1979 and covers many of the principal activities and issues in which Wilkins was engaged from the onset of World War II to the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Featured are the inner workings and operations of the NAACP, Wilkins's relationship to other leaders in the organization, particularly Walter White, and the broadening movement among African Americans after 1945 for equal rights in every sphere of American life. In addition to White, prominent or frequent correspondents include Robert L. Carter, Gloster B. Current, Charles Evers, James Farmer, Chester Arthur Franklin, William Hastie, Lyndon B. Johnson, Daisy E. Lampkin, Thurgood Marshall, Charles H. Matthews Sr., Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., Henry Lee Moon, John A. Morsell, Richard M. Nixon, Arthur B. Spingarn, Harry S. Truman, and Herbert L. Wright.
The NAACP File contains topical and administrative files as well as personal material relating to Wilkins's association with the organization. Among the subjects documented are the civil rights mobilization drive of 1950, an interview Wilkins conducted with Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, copies of Wilkins's Federal Bureau of Investigation file obtained by him through a freedom of information request, and controversy surrounding an unflattering portrayal of Wilkins and the NAACP by Lewis Steel in a New York Times Magazine of 1968. Significant also are items pertaining to the relationship of W. E. B. DuBois to the organization, as reflected in Wilkins's response to an article by DuBois in 1948, and numerous files pertaining to the NAACP's role in the desegregation and civil rights efforts of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to state and local matters within the organization, the NAACP's involvement in improving education for African Americans nationwide is recorded in various files relating to schools in Arkansas, California, New York, and other jurisdictions.
The Speeches and Writings series includes drafts and published copies of articles and newspaper columns by Wilkins, especially "The Roy Wilkins Column" released nationally by the Register and Tribune Syndicate and columns he wrote for the New Amsterdam News. Also in the series is an extensive file of speeches Wilkins delivered around the country in the cause of equal rights between 1946 and 1978.
Contained in the 1997 Addition to the collection are a few items of correspondence, a diary Wilkins kept in January and February 1935, the handwritten text of a speech he delivered to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., on 28 January 1969, and additional writings.
The 2020 Addition includes correspondence, speeches, writings, biographical material, and printed matter. Speeches contain Wilkins's testimony, as executive secretary of NAACP, before the Committee on Commerce of the United States Senate on the hearing of S. 1732, the "Public Accommodations" feature of the civil rights proposal of 1963. Other speech topics cover the Civil Rights Act of 1964, discrimination, racial tensions in America, school segregation, and unemployment. Copies of articles and reprints of writings by Wilkins pertain to topics such as the civil rights movement, segregation, and race relations. Also included in this addition are drafts from various authors, including Wilkins's nephew Roger W. Wilkins, for the November 1981 issue of the magazine Crisis. This particular issue was dedicated to Wilkins and highlighted his life and achievements.