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The Walter White Project

Randy Stakeman, Jackson Stakeman, Authors

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Death of Walter White's Father

Amid the scuffle of Walter White's ascension to be Executive Secretary of the NAACP  tragedy occurred. Walter's father was struck by an automobile and subsequently died. Walter gave his account of the tragedy. The essential facts are true but Walter was never one to let the truth stand in the way of the dramatic effect of a story. His biographer Kenneth Janken notes that his sister could not recall anyone saying "nigger," it took a week (not hours) before Walter arrived there and his father died weeks after being moved not one. As Walter wrote to his sister abut an article he was writing:

[it] is not as a story so much about Dad as it is a picture of what a Negro father of high ideals for himself and family has to undergo in the South, and no matter how exemplary his life and character have been, he also can be made the victim of mob violence as quickly as that of the most worthless Negro.

After his father's funeral he traveled back to New York city alone leaving his wife and children in Atlanta.  Rather than going home or to the office he went directly to his white mistress Poppy Cannon. As she recalled in her memoir,

That day Walter wept in my arms. He  had shown himself to me - vulnerable.  He had let me see his own shame at failure and betrayal.  Walter, the undaunted, intrepid, indomitable, had let me see that he, too, was afraid - afraid of being pitied, afraid of being bitter, afraid of hating...

She said that he told her,

I hated all white people. I hated the young white doctor who had been kind to us.  I hated the sight of my own white face in the mirror.  But then I thought...I thought of you and I came to you.
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