Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Guide to the Mildred Pitts Walter Papers
MS 217  
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Access
  • Access Restrictions
  • Publication Rights
  • Preferred Citation
  • Acquisition Information
  • Processing Information
  • Biography / Administrative History
  • Scope and Content of Collection
  • Arrangement
  • Indexing Terms
  • Other Finding Aids
  • Related Material

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: Mildred Pitts Walter papers
    Dates: 1963-1968
    Collection number: MS 217
    Creator: Walter, Mildred Pitts
    Creator: Congress of Racial Equality. Los Angeles Chapter.
    Collection Size: .25 linear feet (1 box)
    Repository: African American Museum & Library at Oakland (Oakland, Calif.)
    Oakland, CA 94612
    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.
    Languages: Languages represented in the collection: English

    Access

    No access restrictions. Collection is open to the public.

    Access Restrictions

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

    Publication Rights

    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.

    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.

    Biography / Administrative History

    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.

    Scope and Content of Collection

    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.

    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

    Indexing Terms

    The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
    Congress of Racial Equality. Los Angeles Chapter.
    Manual Arts High School (Los Angeles, Calif.)
    Civil rights movements--California--History--20th century.
    Discrimination in housing--California.

    Other Finding Aids

    Mildred Pitts Walter Papers, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

    Related Material

    Mildred Pitts Walter oral history interview conducted by David P. Cline in San Mateo, California, 2013-03-01. Civil Rights History Project collection (AFC 2010/039), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.