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American civil rights leader (1901–1981)

Roy Ottoway Wilkins (August 30, 1901 – September 8, 1981) was an American civil rights leader from the 1930s to the 1970s. His father was not present for his birth, having fled the town in fear of being lynched after he refused demands to step away and yield the sidewalk to a white man. Wilkins graduated from Mechanic Arts High School. His nephew was Roger Wilkins. Wilkins graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in sociology in 1923. a leader of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council—founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). LCCR has become the premier civil rights coalition, and has coordinated the national legislative campaign on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957.

In 1955, Wilkins was chosen to be the executive secretary of the NAACP and in 1964, he became its executive director. He had developed an excellent reputation as a spokesperson for the Civil Rights Movement. One of his first actions was to provide support to civil rights activists in Mississippi who were being subjected to a "credit squeeze" by members of the White Citizens Councils. Wilkins backed a proposal suggested by T. R. M. Howard of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, who headed the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, a leading civil rights organization in the state. Under the plan, black businesses and voluntary associations shifted their accounts to the black owned Tri State Bank of Memphis, Tennessee. By the end of 1955, about $300,000 had been deposited in Tri State for that purpose. The money enabled Tri State to extend loans to credit worthy blacks who were denied loans by white banks. Wilkins participated in the March on Washington (August 1963), which he had helped organize. Wilkins also participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) and the March Against Fear (1966). He believed in achieving reform by legislative means, testified before many Congressional hearings, and conferred with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Those achievements gained Wilkins attention from government officials and other established politicians, earning him respect as well as the nickname, "Mr. Civil Rights". Wilkins strongly opposed militancy in the movement for civil rights as represented by the "black power" movement because of his support for nonviolence. He was a strong critic of racism in any form regardless of its creed, color, or political motivation, and he also declared that violence and racial separation of blacks and whites were not the answer. On issues of segregation, as well, he was a proponent of systematic integration instead of radical desegregation. In a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Wilkins declared,
We Negroes want the improvements in the public school system – and among them, of course, the elimination of segregation, based upon race – the institution of the same quality education in the schools attended by our children as those attended by other children, and we want Negro teachers and we want Negro supervisors, and we want all the opportunity, but the only way our form of government and our structure of society can survive is by some common indoctrination of our citizenry, and we have found this in the public school system. And, for any reformer, black or white, zealot or not, to come along and say, "I'll destroy it, if it doesn't do like I want it to do," is very dangerous business, as far as I'm concerned. However, his moderate views increasingly brought him into conflict with younger, more militant black activists who saw him as an "Uncle Tom." Wilkins was also a member of Omega Psi Phi, a fraternity with a civil rights focus and one of the intercollegiate Greek letter fraternities established for African Americans. In 1964, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP. During his tenure, the NAACP played a pivotal role in leading the nation into the Civil Rights Movement and spearheaded the efforts that led to significant civil rights victories, including Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1968, Wilkins also served as chair of the U. S. delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights. After turning 70 in 1971, he faced increased calls to step down as NAACP chief. In 1977, at the age of 76, Wilkins finally retired from the NAACP and was succeeded by Benjamin Hooks. The purpose of the leaflet was to spread negative press and views about the black political radical and entertainer Paul Robeson throughout Africa. Roger P. Ross, a State Department public affairs officer working in Africa, issued three pages of detailed guidelines including the following instructions:

United States Information and Educational Exchange (USIE) in the Gold Coast, and I suspect everywhere else in Africa, badly needs a through going, sympathetic and regretful but straight talking treatment of the whole Robeson episode there's no way the Communists score on us more easily and more effectively out here, than on the US. Negro problem in general, and on the Robeson case in particular. And, answering the latter, we go a long way toward answering the former. The finished article published by the NAACP was called Paul Robeson: Lost Shepherd, and penned under the false name of "Robert Alan," who the NAACP claimed was a "well known New York journalist." Another article by Roy Wilkins, "Stalin's Greatest Defeat," denounced Robeson and the Communist Party USA in terms consistent with the FBI's information. declaration at the Paris Peace Conference that blacks would not support the United States in a war against the Soviet Union because of the continued lynchings and their legal second class citizen status after World War II, Wilkins stated that regardless of the number of lynchings that then occurred or would occur, black Americans would always serve in the armed forces. Wilkins also threatened to cancel a charter of an NAACP youth group in 1952 if it did not cancel its planned Robeson concert.

Wilkins' views towards the participation of black military members in the US military was a point of contention between him and other prominent civil rights leaders. While most civil rights groups and activists stayed quiet or spoke out against the Vietnam War, Wilkins spoke about what he believed African Americans could gain from serving in the military. An article posted in the Western Journal of Black Studies suggests that black troops were fighting for equality both in the United States as well as overseas. Wilkins emphasized the financial benefits of serving in the military along with the importance of African American citizens participating in the first integrated American army. Wilkins's efforts to further equality in the realm of international affairs were publicly recognized in 1969, when he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon Johnson.

Wilkins died on September 8, 1981, in New York City, at the age of 80. During his later life Wilkins was frequently referred to as the "Senior Statesman" of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1982, his autobiography Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins was published posthumously. The Roy Wilkins Renown Service Award was established in 1980 to recognize members of the Armed Forces who embodied the spirit of equality and human rights. The St. Paul Auditorium was renamed for Wilkins in 1985. The Roy Wilkins Center for Human Relations and Social Justice was established at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs in 1992. Roy Wilkins Park in St. Albans, Queens, New York was named after him as a unique public and cultural touchstone for all of New York City. Gil Scott Heron mentioned Wilkins in his spoken word song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" with this lyric: "There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkins strolling through Watts in a red, black and green liberation jumpsuit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion." Amiri Baraka stated, in his "Civil Rights Poem", that "if i ever see roywilkins [sic.] on the sidewalks imonna [sic.] stick half my sandal up his ass". In 2001, the U. S. Postal Service issued a 34 cent stamp honoring Wilkins. In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Roy Wilkins on his list of the 100 Greatest African Americans. He is played by Joe Morton in the 2016 television drama All the Way. Chris Rock portrayed Wilkins somewhat unfavorably in the 2023 Netflix film Rustin. In the film's final scenes, Wilkins comes around to a more positive view of Bayard Rustin, who is portrayed throughout the film as a Wilkins nemesis during the planning of the March on Washington.