After graduation White worked for a few years in the home office of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company and became a vociferous supporter and guiding force of the Atlanta Branch of the NAACP. White attracted the attention of James Weldon Johnson, secretary of the then-fledgling NAACP, during one of Johnson's visits to the Atlanta branch. As a result of their association, White went to New York in 1918 as assistant secretary to the NAACP, thereby becoming Johnson's assistant.
Because he could pass for white, Walter White became the NAACP's secret weapon against lynching. He was able to report eye-witness accounts of racial disturbances in a series of essays he wrote for the organization. Once, while working on an assignment in Arkansas, he was sworn in as a deputy sheriff and told he had the legal authority to shoot Negroes. With his ability to move freely within the power structure of whites in communities torn by racial strife and lynchings, White was able to gain the confidence of individuals who told him openly their plans and was then able to warn black citizens of the dangers that awaited them. White used these experiences to present in his novels a unique view of America's racial confrontations during the first decades of the twentieth century.
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