In 1951, one of Charles White's iconic pen and ink drawings, executed in 1949, was used on the cover of a publication celebrating Negro History Week. The drawing in question was "Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass)". The publication was 'Prepared by EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT NEW YORK STATE COMMUNIST PARTY' and was 'Dedicated to THE STRUGGLE FOR NEGRO LIBERATION'. White was at the time in his early 30s and in a period in which his work was widely used in publications associated with the Communist Party. Though Douglass had died towards the close of the 19th century, he remained a giant of African American struggle and in this mid 20th century escalation of the civil rights struggle, it was no surprise that White should use this rendering of Douglass to such dramatic and emphatic effect in the drawing. In "Frederick Douglass Lives Again (The Ghost of Frederick Douglass)", the titan was depicted pulling aside barbed wire fencing and pointing in the direction of progress and liberation. Several of the group of African Americans depicted as responding to Douglass's stirring and rousing intervention were those holding aloft symbols of progress through education and learning.

Elsewhere in the publication, on page 14, there was a "Drawing of the Trenton Six by the distinguished Negro artist, Charles White." Though their case is perhaps now less well known than that of the Scottsboro Boys, the Trenton Six was the name by which six African-American defendants tried for murder of an elderly white shopkeeper in January 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey, became known. The six young men were convicted in August 1948 by an all-white jury of the murder and sentenced to death, their cases being widely taken up, with Charles White being among those appalled by and determined to challenge this miscarriage of justice.