His confrontation of the Jim Crow Laws led his activist work and in 1931, he moved to New York City as assistant NAACP secretary under Walter Francis White.
In 1950, Wilkins - along with A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Arnold Aronson,[REF] a leader of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council - founded the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).