Lulu Belle Madison White

Lulu Belle Madison White (August 31, 1900 – July 6, 1957) was a teacher and civil rights activist in Texas during the 1940's and 1950's. In 1939, White was named as the president of the Houston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) before becoming executive secretary of the branch in 1943. Under her leadership, the Houston chapter of the NAACP more than doubled in size from 1943 to 1948.

Early life White was born in Elmo, Texas in 1900 to Henry Madison and Easter Madison. Her father had been born enslaved in 1857 in Mississippi, where at the age of twenty he married Easter Norwood. Lulu was the eleventh of their twelve children, seven of whom were born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, before Henry and Easter Madison moved the family to Elmo after 1891.

Elmo was a predominately black community thirty-five miles north of Dallas. The region was noted for its especially racist customs, and this helped incite White to become a civil rights activist. Her father encouraged White to receive an education.

Career In 1923, White enrolled at Butler College in Tyler, Texas, for a year before transferring to Prairie View College (now Prairie View A&M University) in Hempstead, Texas. Here, she received a bachelor's degree in English in 1928. Sweatt eventually won the landmark case, Sweatt v. Painter, in 1950.

In 1949, White stepped down from her role as executive secretary of the Houston branch after disagreements with Carter Wesley over the issue of racial integration. However, she remained the Director of State Branches. White led the movement for the Houston City Council to pass an ordinance that would allow city hospitals to employ black doctors, helped organize protests for African-American women to be able to try on clothes in department stores, and worked to integrate taxi companies. She went on to be a field worker for the national branch of the NAACP, and later the national branch of the NAACP would create a Lulu White Freedom Fund in her honor. She remained politically active until her death from a heart ailment on July 6, 1957. It is suspected that she died of heart disease and is currently buried in Paradise South in Houston, Texas. In the week before her death, the NAACP created the Lulu White Freedom Fund in her honor.