This image is the cover for the book Flight

Flight

“A groundbreaking novel of the Harlem Renaissance . . . Telling the story of black migration, urbanization, and segregation.” —Thadious M. Davis, author of Understanding Alice Walker

Published in 1926 and written by civil rights activist and longtime head of the NAACP Walter White, Flight “belongs to an extinct but historically crucial genre of African-American fiction: the passing novel. Here, White, himself light enough to pass, explores the many dimensions of the path not taken. Along the way, he reflects on the American propensity for personal reinvention and the arbitrariness of racial designation” (Nell Irvin Painter, New York Times–bestselling author of The History of White People).

When Mimi Daquin is fourteen, she, her father, and her stepmother leave the charm and romance of New Orleans behind to move to Atlanta. It is in this rustling, bustling city, where, for the first time, the light-skinned Mimi begins to learn where lines are drawn between the different shades of African Americans. Ever observant, Mimi soon realizes that opportunity comes in a direct ratio to the absence of pigmentation, a lesson that will serve her well in the future, when—after the 1906 Atlanta race riot, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and struggles in Philadelphia and Harlem—she decides to pass as white. And though Mimi is amazingly successful in her quest, she may never be able to reconcile the price she has to pay for it.

“An excellent novel . . . With this second book Mr. White takes on quite a new stature. There is little doubt but that he will be heard from further.” —New York Herald Tribune

Walter White

Walter White was an African American civil rights activist who led the NAACP for a quarter of a century after joining the organization in 1918. He was also a journalist, novelist, and essayist. Of multiracial descent, at times he passed as white to facilitate, and protect himself during, his investigations of lynchings and riots in the South. He worked with President Harry S. Truman on desegregating the armed forces after the Second World War, and under White’s leadership, the NAACP set up its Legal Defense Fund, which conducted numerous legal challenges to segregation and disenfranchisement. White quintupled NAACP membership to nearly 500,000 during his twenty-five years with the organization.

Open Road Media