WALTER WHITE (1893-1955), author of two novels and three books of nonfiction, was assistant secretary and then secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 1918 until his death. To write Rope and Faggot, White, an African American who had a light complexion, blond hair, and blue eyes, drew upon his experiences as an incognito investigator of more than forty lynchings and eight race riots.
Kenneth Robert Janken is associate professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Janken is author of Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African-American Intellectual and an introduction to What the Negro Wants (University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).