Join us for a preview of FORGOTTEN HERO: WALTER WHITE AND THE NAACP, a new documentary film from PBS’s American Experience, premiering Tues., Feb 25 at 9/8c on PBS stations nationwide.

While many think that the civil rights movement began in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus, the stage had been set decades before by activists in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Some of the NAACP leaders are familiar — including W.E.B. Du Bois and Thurgood Marshall — but Walter White, head of the NAACP from 1929 to 1955, has been all but forgotten. With his blond hair and blue eyes, Walter White looked white; he described himself as “an enigma, a Black man occupying a white body.” Like virtually all light-skinned African Americans of his day, White was descended from enslaved Black women and powerful white men. But he was Black — by law, identity, and conviction and spent his entire life fighting for Black civil rights. FORGOTTEN HERO: WALTER WHITE AND THE NAACP traces the life of this neglected civil rights hero and looks for the reasons behind his disappearance from our history.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring the filmmakers and interviewees from the film.