Pearl Buck’s Important Civil Rights Legacy

Abstract Author and humanitarian Pearl S. Buck’s early support of the American civil rights movement is among the most important parts of her legacy. Buck took a public stand against racism shortly before her return to the United States in the mid-1930s. With the publication The Good Earth , she would become a bestselling writer at the age of 40. Buck, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, became two of the biggest white supporters of the civil rights movement through the 1930s and 1940s. Buck became associated with the National Urban League, and then later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as she supported equal rights for Black citizens. Her statements made headlines in newspapers frequently during that era. In The New York Times in November 1941 she challenged Americans to reconsider their Constitution to include all Black people as equals or to officially deny them full civil rights. At her June 5, 1942 address at Howard University, Buck called for balancing patriotism with equality. In 1951, Buck’s last widely publicized stand against race prejudice was her role in a controversy about school segregation in Washington, D.C., which she opposed in a national media controversy.