Kenneth Janken, associate professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discussed his new book, White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP (New Press, 2003).

This is the first biography about Walter White, who served as executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1931 to 1955, and is credited with bringing the NAACP to national prominence. Historian David Levering Lewis has called White "the civil rights virtuoso of the mid-20th century, whose literary salesmanship helped launch the Harlem Renaissance and whose organizational leadership made possible Brown v. Board of Education.

Kenneth Robert Janken is associate professor of Afro-American Studies and adjunct professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African American Intellectual (University of Massachusetts Press, 1993). The program was part of the Center for the Book's Books & Beyond series of talks about new books based on the Library's collections and programs and was a part of the Library's commemoration of Black History Month. It was co-sponsored with the Library's Manuscript Division.