Walter White, 2 page manuscript.
On Walter White
“The Finder-Of-The-Way”
Hurston, Zora Neale. Testimonial on Walter White. Ca. 1937.
Two-page typescript; signed – “with faithful feelings” – by Hurston in red ink; with a single penciled correction to White’s name on page two. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
This unpublished typescript was written by Hurston ca. 1937, on the occasion of White’s 25th anniversary at the NAACP. In it, Hurston names White as her close friend, and then christens him “his right name, as the human home of the greatest of Negro spirits, HIGH JOHN DE CONQUER.” She describes this apocryphal figure as being a symbol of salvation and a “Day-Bringer:”
HIGH JOHN DE CONQUER is that will to victory distilled in Negro souls, that has and will carry on through and despite every difficulty. If not today, somehow, someway to the dignity of manhood, and the right to happiness. HIGH JOHN DE CONQUER is not new. He has been with us in America since the first slave ship dropped its miserable load on American soil. He hovered over the burdened ships like a great, but invisible bird, and followed them across the seas on the winds of panted prayers. The bread of Hope and the foe of despair. Wherever the burden was heaviest, and the agony most bitter, there was HIGH JOHN DE CONQUER making laughter out of sorrow, and songs out of sighs.
Hurston continues with a crescendo of praise for White, as having been entrusted with “the weapon forged for him by the power behind right”; as having suffered; as having fought against “Intolerance, Hate and Injustice”; as having not only continued the resistance started by the Abolitionists, but also “broadened the scope to defeat new, deceptive forms of slavery”; and as being more than a “defender of Negro rights. …the defender of the honor of America, and the civilized world.” Hurston closes her piece with these accolades: “He is one of the world’s great citizens. He is a maker-of-the-way-out-of-no-way. He is the incarnation of that great Finder-of-the-way, HIGH JOHN DE CONQUER, the DAY-BRINGER. He has fought the good fight.”
Hurston and White were acquainted as early as 1932, when he engaged her skills in casting dancers for a play he was producing titled Batouala, which chronicled life and rites of passage in an African village. In spite of the participation of other notables – Paul Robeson was cast as the lead – the economic strain of the Depression precluded the staging of the play.
Hurston published an essay about High John de Conquer in the October 1943 issue of American Mercury. Boyd explains, “‘High John de Conquer’ was an essay that praised the subtle power of love and laughter to overcome oppression,” and enlightened readers on the mythical figure, who was considered the “hope-bringer” for African Americans. Hurston, in the American Mercury essay, lauds, “He was top-superior to the whole mess of sorrow. He could beat it all, and what made it so cool, finish it off with a laugh” (Wrapped in Rainbows, by Valerie Boyd, New York…: Scribner, 2003, p. 371).
Walter White (1893-1955) is best known for his activism on behalf of the NAACP, for whom he worked nearly forty years as the assistant secretary (1918-1929), the acting secretary (1929-1930) and the secretary (1931-1955). His notable work for the NAACP includes investigating mob lynchings in the South and addressing discrimination in the armed forces during World War II; he also lobbied senators, congressmen and presidents to further civil rights in America. White – who was less than one-quarter black – nonetheless identified himself as African American. He was successful in his pursuits because he was able to manipulate the color barrier, posing as “black” or “white” as befit the situation. In addition to his work for the NAACP, he was a war correspondent (1943-45), a newspaper columnist, a member of various advisory committees – like the governor’s committee on the constitutional convention in New York State (1938) – and w
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