The outstanding spokesman of the Negro race tells of a lifetime spent in combatting cruelty and discrimination. Fair skinned, Walter White learned during the Atlanta riot of his childhood what it was to be a Negro- ""hunted, hanged, abused"", evolved the conviction expressed at the close of the book- ""I am white and I am black, and know that there is no difference"". Going to New York in 1918, White went to work for the NAACP, since 1931 has been the general secretary of that association, and has played a prominent part in many cases of personal injustice, in many issues of national discrimination. Riots, the KKK, the vote, the treatment of black Haiti, and always-recurrently-lynchings. The backing of Mrs. Roosevelt, the backtracking of F.D.R., the close friendship with Willkie; race discrimination in education, in the army, in jobs- and in housing after the war- all these questions play a part in what is not only the struggle of a man but of his people against inequality... In the field of race relations, this is of course a basic book.