orthopedic surgeon and medical professor, was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Augustus Aaron White, a physician, and Vivian Dandridge, a prominent teacher and librarian in the Memphis public schools. White's father died when the boy was only eight years old. The idealism that motivated White to become involved in civil rights was shaped in his boyhood, when Benjamin Hooks, also a Memphis resident and later the national chairman of the NAACP, was a family friend. As a teenager in the 1950s, White worked to register African Americans to vote at a time when many black activists feared violent reprisals for daring to challenge Jim Crow Reflecting on his early activism White later stated I reserved some energy to keeping racial issues in the front of my mind and attempting to make a contribution in terms of communication good will and influencing people and ...
