Book excerpt: "Most accounts of the civil rights movement focus on male leaders and the organizations they led, leaving a dearth of information about the countless Black women who were the backbone of the struggle in local communities across the country. ... Lulu B. White was one of those women in the civil rights movement in Texas. Executive secretary of the Houston branch of the NAACP and state director of branches, White was a significant force in the struggle against Jim Crow during the 1940s and 1950s. She was at the helm of the Houston chapter when the Supreme Court struck down the white primary in Smith v. Allbright, and she led the fight to get more blacks elected to public office, to gain economic parity for African Americans, and to integrate the University of Texas"--