After graduating from Atlanta University in 1916 Walter White began to work for the Standard Life Insurance Company as a clerk and then cashier. He had begun to work for them during his final summer in college as a salesman who sold life insurance to African Americans living outside Atlanta. A school controversy caused other middle class African Americans to organize to stop encroachment on black education in order to fund white school expansion. White was instrumental in organizing this group and chartering a branch of the newly founded NAACP in Atlanta. When NAACP field organizer James Weldon Johnson visited the new branch in 1917 he was impressed with the energy and organizational ability of White. He returned to New York and got the endorsement of W.E.B. Du Bois to offer a job to the young White as Johnson's assistant. After carefully considering Johnson's offer White moved to New York to begin his new life in January, 1918.