Don't Shout Too Soon (1917-1940)

Mob violence, lynchings, and massacres of blacks increase between World Wars I and II, and three members of the fledgling NAACP lead campaigns to confront these threats. W.E.B. Du Bois called for veterans of World War I to "return fighting." Walter White went among the lynchers to discover the truth behind the rapes and insurrections allegedly committed by blacks, and Charles Hamilton Houston designed and successfully applied a legal strategy that challenged Jim Crow and resulted in the famous "Brown vs. Board of Education" decision, which desegregated public schools in 1954.