Roy Wilkins Civil Rights Leader, Executive Director - NAACP Scott # 3501  Issued January 24, 2001 in Minneapolis, MN  Designed by Richard Sheaff

Roy Ottoway Wilkins was born on August 30, 1901 in St. Louis, Missouri. Roy grew up in the home of an Aunt and Uncle in St Paul, Minnesota. (His father had fled St Louis to avoid being lynched.)

Roy attended racially integrated schools, however he became aware of racism at an early age due to several incidents that happened while he was living in St. Paul. He was strongly affected by one incident in 1909 where 3 black men were lynched by a Minnesota mob of 5000 whites. 

Roy attended the University of Minnesota and received his Bachelors degree in 1923. He served as an editor of the school paper, The Minnesota Daily and also edited a Black weekly, The St Paul Appeal. He became a member of the NAACP while still a student at the university. 

Roy worked for a Black weekly, The Kansas City Call from 1923 until 1931.  In 1931 he joined Walter White and served as the assistant executive secretary of the NAACP. In 1932, Roy proved a case of discrimination against a flood control project in Mississippi. He was arrested in 1934 as a member of a picket march in Washington, D.C. to protest lynching. Later that year he replaced W.E.B. Dubois as the editor of the NAACP's Crisis Magazine. 

In 1955 Roy was appointed to serve as the Executive Director of the NAACP. He led the NAACP through the Civil Rights Era and helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King. Roy believed in legal non-violent means of combating Racism which alienated him from many of the more radical Black groups. 

Roy served in many other organizations. These included such diverse groups as The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, The Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation, The Kennedy Memorial Library Foundation, and Peace with Freedom.

Roy was nicknamed Mr. Civil Rights for his tireless work on behalf of racial equality and civil rights. 

Roy Wilkins died on September 8, 1981 in New York City.

Sources: 
Encyclopedia Britannica  
Encyclopedia Africana