When Walter White arrived at the national office the NAACP was still led by a group of white reformers.  It was not until two years later in 1920 that James Weldon Johnson became the first African American executive secretary with White as his assistant.  At its inception the thought was that whites would concern themselves with raising the funds to keep the organization going by soliciting donations from other whites.  This never worked very well and the organization existed on a shoestring budget.  African Americans meanwhile were making the Association's magazine, The Crisis, a self sufficient enterprise.  The white reformers who led the organization gradually came to accept that the African American population was the only one vitally interested in what they were doing.  The organization under Johnson's stewardship as field secretary had begun to produce a system of branches whose dues became the organization's greatest financial support.

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