Mildred Pitts Walter papers, 1963-1968

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Summary

Creators:
Walter, Mildred Pitts and Congress of Racial Equality. Los Angeles Chapter.
Abstract:
The Mildred Pitts Walter papers document Mildred and Earl Walter’s participation in civil rights protests in Los Angeles in the 1960s as part of the Los Angeles branch of the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) and as parents at Manual Arts High School.
Extent:
.25 linear feet (1 box)
Language:
Languages represented in the collection: English
Preferred citation:

Mildred Pitts Walter papers , MS 217, African American Museum & Library at Oakland, Oakland Public Library. Oakland, California.

Background

Scope and content:

The Mildred Pitts Walter papers document Mildred and Earl Walter’s participation in civil rights protests in Los Angeles in the 1960s as part of the Los Angeles branch of the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) and as parents at Manual Arts High School. The collection is organized into five series: I. Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) II. Manual Arts High School (Los Angeles, Calif.) III. Earl Lloyd Walter funeral program IV. Photographs V. Anti-Black Defamation League. The C.O.R.E. materials consist of legal documents filed in the Superior Court of the State of California seeking an injunction and compensation from four Los Angeles home builders that discriminated against non-white homebuyers, a C.O.R.E. pamphlet on segregation in Los Angeles and one issue of the CORE-lator newsletter. The Manual Arts High School (Los Angeles, Calif.) series includes legal documents, photographs, flyers, and press releases documenting students and parents’ 1965 struggle against the Los Angeles Board of Education to build a new boys basketball gymnasium comparable to other all-white schools in the district. Also included in the collection is a press release of the Anti-Black Defamation League opposing the film adaptation of William Styron’s novel The Confessions of Nat Turner, on the grounds that its depiction of Turner was inaccurate and insensitive.

Biographical / historical:

Author, activist, and educator Mildred Pitts Walter (1922- ) was born in Sweetville, Louisiana in 1922 to Paul Pitts, a lumberman, and Mary Ward Pitts and raised in southwestern Louisiana near DeRidder, Louisiana. After graduating from Southern University in 1944, she followed her sister to Longview, Washington to work in the shipyards during World War II and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles, California. In Los Angeles, she gained her teaching certificate at California State University allowing her to work as an elementary school teacher and met her husband Earl Lloyd Walter, a fellow graduate of Southern University, at a Methodist church event. They both became active members of the Los Angeles Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) fighting for fair employment and fair housing. They picketed banks, retail stores, and other businesses in central Los Angeles that were not hiring non-whites for non-menial positions. Earl Walter served as the chapter’s branch chairman and they sued builders that would not sell houses to non-white homebuyers and led voter registration drives and de-segregation efforts in the American South.

As a teacher, she noticed that many of her African American students had few books that were written that allowed to see themselves as protagonists. With the encouragement of a Los Angeles publisher, she published her first book in 1969, Lillie of Watts, a birthday discovery, which told the story of a young black girl from the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. After the success of her first book, she published a sequel, Lillie of Watts Takes a Giant Step (1971), and would publish a total of 22 books for young adult audiences. Many of her books focused on helping children understand the history and struggle of blacks for equality and include award-winning books Girl on the Outside (1982), Trouble’s Child (1985), and Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World (1986). Her books have been awarded the American Library Association’s Coretta Scott King Book Award, the Christopher Award, Parents’ Choice Award for Literature, and has twice been awarded the National Council for the Social Studies’ Carter G. Woodson Book Award.

Acquisition information:
Collection donated to the African American Museum Library at Oakland by Mildred Pitts Walter on October 10, 2017.
Processing information:

Processed by Sean Heyliger, Archivist, October 21, 2017.

Arrangement:

I. Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) II. Manual Arts High School (Los Angeles, Calif.) III. Earl Lloyd Walter funeral program IV. Photographs V. Anti-Black Defamation League

Rules or conventions:
Finding aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

No access restrictions. Collection is open to the public.

Materials are for use in-library only, non-circulating.

Terms of access:

Permission to publish from the Mildred Pitts Walter Papers must be obtained from the African American Museum & Library at Oakland.

Preferred citation:

Mildred Pitts Walter papers , MS 217, African American Museum & Library at Oakland, Oakland Public Library. Oakland, California.

Location of this collection:
659 14th Street
Oakland, CA 94612, US
Contact:
(510) 637-0198
aamlo@oaklandlibrary.org
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