Walter White Publishes 'The Fire in the Flint'

Civil rights activist and NAACP leader Walter White published his debut novel 'The Fire in the Flint' with Alfred A. Knopf in 1924. The novel, drawing on White's undercover investigations of racial violence in the South, illuminated racial oppression and the terror of lynching. White's ability to pass as white allowed him to investigate over 40 lynchings and 8 race riots, and the novel translated that reporting into fiction that reached mainstream audiences.