A Rising Wind — Walter White

Walter White
Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc. · Garden City, New York · 1945
First Edition · First Printing

The Book:
The First Edition · First Printing of Walter White’s A Rising Wind, published by Doubleday, Doran in 1945. Written after the longtime NAACP Executive Secretary traveled through wartime theaters investigating the treatment of Black American servicemen, the book combines firsthand reporting with a broader indictment of the contradiction between America’s democratic war aims and segregation within its own armed forces. Small octavo; 155 pp. Original red publisher’s cloth stamped in black. The original dust jacket is not present.

Condition:
Very Good. Original red publisher’s cloth with black spine lettering and front-board decoration. Binding remains square and sound with moderate rubbing, scattered soiling, fraying at the head and foot of the spine, and light corner wear exposing small areas of board. Interior remains clean with moderate, even age toning and a previous owner’s pencil inscription on the front free endpaper. No restoration observed. Lacking the original dust jacket.

Story Of The Book

Walter White did not write about segregation in the American military from an office in New York. He went to the war and looked for himself.

As Executive Secretary of the NAACP and a special correspondent, White traveled through wartime theaters investigating the conditions faced by Black American troops. He spoke with soldiers and officers, visited segregated units, and examined how the racial hierarchy of the United States had followed its military overseas. His observations ultimately informed recommendations to the War Department for reforms in the treatment and deployment of Black servicemen.

A Rising Wind grew directly from that reporting. Published in 1945, it documented the status of Black troops while the war itself was still being fought, turning their experiences into evidence against the racial contradiction at the center of America's war effort.

Black Americans were fighting regimes organized around racial supremacy while serving inside a military that remained segregated. Yet White also saw the war destabilizing some of those assumptions as Black servicemen demonstrated their ability under combat conditions and Americans encountered racial relationships different from those they had known at home.

America was fighting racial tyranny overseas while carrying Jim Crow with it. Walter White went to the front and documented the contradiction.

Why It’s In The Collection

A Rising Wind belongs in Consigned to Darkness because it preserves civil-rights advocacy at the point where argument became firsthand evidence.

White was not reconstructing the experience of Black servicemen years later. He traveled through wartime theaters, investigated their treatment, reported what he found, and published that evidence in 1945.

That places this first printing at an extraordinary historical hinge: between the war against fascism and the emerging modern Civil Rights Movement. The democratic ideals invoked to fight racial authoritarianism overseas could now be turned toward segregation, disenfranchisement, and racial violence inside the United States.

The book therefore brings together histories too often treated separately—World War II, Black military service, investigative journalism, and the accelerating struggle for equal citizenship.

Before America could celebrate the democracy it had defended abroad, Walter White asked what kind of democracy its Black soldiers would be coming home to.

Collection Categories: Civil Rights · Witness Literature · Investigative Journalism · War & Conflict · Political Dissent · Human Rights · Anti-Authoritarianism · Political History · Publication-Event Object

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Authentication Evidence

• Title page identifies the work as A Rising Wind by Walter White.

• Title page carries the correct Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc. publisher identification.

• Title page is dated 1945, consistent with the book’s original publication.

• Copyright page explicitly states “FIRST EDITION,” directly confirming first-edition status.

• No subsequent-printing statement appears on the copyright page; observed bibliographic evidence supports identification as the First Edition · First Printing.

• Volume collates to 155 pages, small octavo, consistent with specialist bibliographic descriptions of the 1945 first edition.

• Original publisher’s red cloth binding remains present.

• Original binding retains the correct black spine lettering and front-board decoration.

• Publisher imprint, typography, binding, paper, and production characteristics are internally consistent with documented 1945 Doubleday, Doran copies.

• Previous owner’s pencil inscription remains present on the front free endpaper.

• No evidence of book-club manufacture, later publisher attribution, rebinding, facsimile production, or restoration is observed.

• Original dust jacket is not present.

• Observable bibliographic evidence supports identification as the 1945 First Edition · First Printing.