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Roy Wilkins was best known as the executive director of the NAACP and a leader of the African-American civil rights movement.


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Roy Wilkins was born on August 30, 1901 in St. Louis, Missouri. Beginning his career as a journalist and editor for the Kansas City Call, Wilkins went on to become the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. While heading the NAACP, Wilkins helped organize the 1963 March on Washington during which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Wilkins died in 1981.

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