Walter White had first met Poppy Cannon, a white South African by birth, in 1928.  Their off and on again friendship and then affair lasted despite his long marriage to Gladys and Poppy”s three marriages and children by each of her husbands. Over the next twenty years they did not have the courage to do more than fleetingly enjoy each other’s company.  Perhaps he feared what public knowledge of an interracial relationship would do to his cause as well as his family.  A heart attack in 1947 jolted him into action.  Fearing he did not have many years left over the next two years he confessed his affair to some confidants, tried to resign from the NAACP, and initiated a divorce from his wife Gladys.

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