Henry Kempton Craft

Henry Kempton Craft (18 October 1883 – 31 August 1974) was an American YMCA executive and civil rights activist.

He was the grandson of William and Ellen Craft, enslaved people and abolitionists from Macon, Georgia, who became famous for their daring escape from slavery in 1848 and their 1860 book, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; Or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery.

[1] Henry Craft had a long career with the YMCA starting in 1918 when he served as the Boy's Work Secretary on the International Committee.

[5][6] In 1941, along with A. Philip Randolf, Walter White, Lester Granger, Frank Crosswaith, Layle Lane, and Rayford Logan, Henry Craft was an organizing member of the Negroes' Committee to March on Washington for Equal Participation in National Defense, which planned to mobilize 50,000 to 100,000 marchers on July 1, 1941 to protest the Jim Crow defense program after previous efforts to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt to desegregate the military were unsuccessful.

[7][8] A week before the march, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, which prohibited ethnic or racial discrimination in the nation's defense industry (including in companies, unions, and federal agencies engaged in war-related work) and created the Fair Employment Practice Committee.