How Far the Promised Land?" by NAACP Leader Walter White on Civil Rights Progress, First Edition 1955

1955. [African American][Civil Rights] White, Walter. How Far the Promised Land? Foreword by Ralph J. Bunche. New York: The Viking Press, 1955. First edition. Publisher's green cloth, in original dust jacket designed by Robert Hallock. The final book by civil rights activist Walter White (1893-1955), longtime executive secretary of the NAACP and one of the most important civil rights leaders of the twentieth century. Completed shortly before his sudden death in March 1955, How Far the Promised Land? surveys the progress and setbacks in African American life during the preceding fifteen years. White evaluates landmark achievements such as the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the desegregation of the armed services, and the growth of Black political participation and trade unionism, while also acknowledging the persistence of prejudice, segregation, and economic inequality. The work stands as both memoir and manifesto: a summation of White's lifetime of activism, and a statement of faith in the democratic process as a means of resolving "the Negro problem." Particularly notable is his rejection of Communism as a political solution, reflecting debates within mid-century Black intellectual and political life. With a foreword by Nobel Prize-winning diplomat Ralph J. Bunche, the book underscores its place in the civil rights discourse at the dawn of the modern movement. Dust jacket shows edgewear, small chips at head and tail of spine, with mild soiling to rear panel; still bright and well-preserved. Cloth binding clean and firm, textblock crisp. Overall, a very good copy in good only jacket. A significant primary source for historians of the civil rights struggle, published at a pivotal moment between Brown v. Board and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.