The story of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the most powerful civil rights organization ever created, through the key figures who shaped it. One of the most important but least understood figures in civil rights history, Walter White was the NAACP's longest reigning president. White clung to the belief that, for all its flaws, America held the seeds of its own redemption. When White took over the NAACP in 1929, Black Americans were socially and politically marginalized. By the time he died in 1955, they were a crucial segment of the electorate and on the brink of the landmark legal and legislative victories that would forever reshape the country. The NAACP (and its leading advocates), including White, WEB DuBois, Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston, created a blueprint for America to follow to live up to its ideals.