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Founding and Early Years

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William English Walling (1877–1936), a prominent socialist and journalist, was descended from wealthy Kentucky slaveholders. He was a founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, the Women’s Trade Union League, the Social Democratic League, and the NAACP. In 1908 Walling and his wife, Anna Strunsky, a revolutionary Russian Jew, traveled to Springfield, Illinois, to investigate the race riot. In his article, The Race War in the North, which appeared in the September 3 Independent, Walling declared: “the spirit of the abolitionists, of Lincoln and Lovejoy, must be revived and we must come to treat the negro on a plane of absolute political and social equality,” and he appealed for a “large and powerful body of citizens to come to their aid.” The article aroused the conscience of Mary White Ovington, a New York social worker, who wrote a letter to Walling offering her support.