Roy Wilkins: The Gentle Giant Advisor to presidents and the nation’s leading spokesman for black Americans, Wilkins’ steady hand on the tiller brings the NAACP to its apogee

Even if we did not believe steadfastly in making real, for black as well as white Americans, the great dream of equal opportunity for our young nation, tactically, for a numerical minority of about one-tenth, and an economic, political, and social minority of far less strength, integration is the only way to go. The word integration is not used here to mean assimilation. No one is advocating loss of identity, loss of color distinction, the burying of a culture, and a complete merging into the general population. The anti-integrationists have sought to give that impression of the integrationist position. We seek no elusive “melting pot.” Instead, we use the dictionary definition of integration: “The making up of a whole by adding together or combining the separate parts or elements.”