public lecture

N.A.A.C.P.’s Walter White speaks in Wilson.

Wilson Daily Times, 19 May 1933.

Two years into his long stint as Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Walter F. White delivered a lecture at Wilson’s Calvary Presbyterian Church.

For more about White’s extraordinary life as a civil rights activist, see here and A.J. Baime’s White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret (2022).

Walter F. White (1893-1955).

Hat tip to G.K. Butterfield Jr. for the article on White’s visit — he learned of the event from his father, G.K. Butterfield Sr. 

Photograph of Walter Francis White, between 1920 and 1940. NAACP Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (051.00.00) Courtesy of the NAACP [Digital ID # cph.3c07019].

African lecturer speaks to two audiences in Wilson.

Wilson Daily Times, 5 September 1916.

Accolades notwithstanding, I have not been able to find anything else about Dr. C.E. Chechzzli or determine more precisely where he was from. After the Scramble for Africa, five European colonizers — Britain, Italy, France, Belgium, and Germany — controlled parts of eastern Africa now comprising Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, Rwanda, and Burundi.  However, “East Africa,” in English-speaking countries, traditionally has been understood as the territory now comprising Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

Clipping courtesy of J. Robert Boykin III.