National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (
NAACP), is one of the oldest and most influential
civil rights organizations in the
United States. It was founded
February 12 1909 to work on behalf of
African Americans. Members of the organization have referred to it as
The National Association, referencing the NAACP's pre-eminence among organizations active in the struggle for civil rights and
equality since its origins in the first decade of the
20th century. Due to this fact, its members feel little need is to specify
which "national association." Its name, retained in accord with tradition, is one of the last surviving uses of the term "
colored people", now generally viewed as dated and derogatory. In the historical context of the NAACP, however, the term is not considered offensive.
The NAACP's headquarters are in
Baltimore, Maryland, with additional regional offices in
California,
New York,
Michigan,
Missouri,
Georgia, and
Texas. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in the states included in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters
organize activities for individual members.
The NAACP is run nationally by a 64-member board of directors led by a chairman. The board elects one person as the president and chief executive officer for the organization;
Bruce S. Gordon was selected to fill this post in 2005 following the resignation of
Kweisi Mfume, who had headed the organization for nine years. Civil Rights Movement activist and former Georgia state representative
Julian Bond remains as chairman.
Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action. Local chapters are supported by the Branch and Field Services department and the Youth and College department. The Legal Department focuses on
court cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government, or education. The
Washington, D.C. bureau is responsible for
lobbying the
U.S. Government; and the Education Department works to improve
public education at the local, state and federal levels. The goal of the Health Division is to advance healthcare for minorities through public policy initiatives and education.
As of 2004, the NAACP had approximately 500,000 members.
In 1905, a group of 32 prominent, outspoken African Americans met to discuss the challenges facing "people of color" (a term of the time used to refer to people who do not have white skin or a
Caucasian appearance) in the U.S. and possible strategies and solutions. Because hotels in the U.S. were segregated, the men convened, under the leadership of
Harvard scholar
W.E.B. DuBois, at a hotel situated on the
Canadian side of
Niagara Falls. As a result, the group came to be known as the
Niagara Movement. A year later, three whites joined the group: journalist
William E. Walling; social worker
Mary White Ovington; and Jewish social worker
Henry Moskowitz.
The fledgling group struggled for a time with limited resources and decided to broaden its membership in order to increase its scope and effectiveness. Solicitations for support went out to more than 60 prominent Americans of the day, and a meeting date was set for
February 12 1909, intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of
President Abraham Lincoln. While the meeting did not occur until three months later, this date is often cited as the founding date of the organization.
The
Springfield Race Riot of 1908 in Lincoln's hometown of
Springfield, Illinois the previous summer had highlighted the urgent need for a large civil rights organization in the U.S. This event is often cited as the spark that initiated the formation of the NAACP.
May 30,
1909, the Niagara Movement conference took place at New York City's
Henry Street Settlement House, from which an organization of more than 40 individuals emerged, calling itself the
National Negro Committee. DuBois played a key role in organizing the event and presided over the proceedings. Also in attendance was African American journalist and anti-
lynching crusader
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, co-founder of the NAACP. The organization held its second conference in May of 1910, where members chose the name the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The name was formally adopted
May 30, and the NAACP incorporated a year later, in 1911. The association's charter delineated its mission:
To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.
The conference resulted in a more viable, influential and diverse organization, where the leadership was predominantly white and heavily Jewish. In fact, at its founding, the NAACP had only one African American on its executive board, DuBois himself, and did not elect a black president until 1975. The
Jewish community contributed greatly to the NAACP's founding and continued financing. Jewish historian
Howard Sachar writes in his book
A History of Jews in America of how, "In 1914, Professor Emeritus
Joel Spingarn of
Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff,
Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi
Stephen Wise." [
1] Early Jewish co-founders included
Julius Rosenthal,
Lillian Wald, Rabbi
Emil G. Hirsch and Wise.
DuBois continued to play a pivotal role in the organization and served as editor of the association's magazine,
The Crisis, which had a circulation of over 30,000.
The president of the NAACP from its founding to 1930 was
Moorfield Storey, who was white. Storey was a long-time classical liberal and
Grover Cleveland Democrat who advocated
laissez faire free markets, the
gold standard, and
anti-imperialism. Storey consistently and aggressively championed civil rights not only for blacks but also for American Indians and immigrants (he opposed immigration restriction).
Fighting Jim Crow
 |
An African American drinks out of a segregated water cooler designated for "colored" patrons in 1939 at a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City. |
In its early years, the NAACP concentrated on using the courts to overturn the
Jim Crow statutes that legalized
racial discrimination. In 1913, the NAACP organized opposition to
President Woodrow Wilson's introduction of
racial segregation into federal government policy.
By 1914, the group had 6,000 members and 50 branches, and was influential in winning the right of African-Americans to serve as officers in
World War I. Six hundred African-American officers were commissioned and 700,000 registered for the draft. The following year the NAACP organized a nationwide protest against
D.W. Griffith's silent film
Birth of a Nation, a film that glamorized the
Ku Klux Klan.
The NAACP began playing a leading role in lawsuits targeting racial segregation and other denials of civil rights early in its history. It played a significant part in the challenge to
Oklahoma's discriminatory "grandfather" rule that disenfranchised many black citizens. It persuaded the
United States Supreme Court to rule in
Buchanan v. Warley in 1917 that states and local governments cannot officially segregate African Americans into separate residential districts. The Court's opinion reflected the jurisprudence of property rights and freedom of contract as embodied in the earlier precedent it established in
Lochner v. New York.
In 1916, when the NAACP was just seven years old, chairman Joel Spingarn invited
James Weldon Johnson to serve as field secretary. Johnson was a former U.S. consul to
Venezuela and a noted scholar and columnist. Within four years, Johnson was instrumental in increasing the NAACP's membership from 9,000 to almost 90,000. In 1920, Johnson was elected head of the organization. Over the next ten years under his leadership, the NAACP would escalate its lobbying and litigation efforts, becoming internationally known for its advocacy of equal rights and equal protection for the "American Negro".
The NAACP devoted much of its energy between the
First and
Second World Wars to fighting the
lynching of blacks throughout the United States. The organization sent
Walter F. White to
Phillips County, Arkansas, in October, 1919, to investigate the
Elaine Race Riot in which more than two hundred black tenant farmers were killed by roving white vigilantes and federal troops after a deputy sheriff's attack on a union meeting of sharecroppers left one white man dead. The NAACP organized the appeals for the twelve men sentenced to death a month later â€" based on the fact of the testimony used in their convictions having been obtained by beatings and electric shocks â€" and obtained a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision in
Moore v. Dempsey that significantly expanded the federal courts' oversight of the states' criminal justice systems in the years to come.
The NAACP also spent more than a decade seeking federal legislation barring lynching. The organization regularly displayed a black flag stating "A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" from the window of its offices in
New York to mark each outrage.
The NAACP led the successful fight, in alliance with the
American Federation of Labor to prevent the nomination of
John Johnston Parker to the Supreme Court based on his support for denial of the right to vote to blacks and his anti-labor rulings. It organized support for the
Scottsboro Boys, although the NAACP lost most of the internecine battles with the
Communist Party and the
International Labor Defense over the control of those cases and the strategy to be pursued. The organization also brought litigation to challenge the "white primary" system in the South.
Desegregation
The NAACP's Legal department, headed by
Charles Hamilton Houston and
Thurgood Marshall, undertook a campaign spanning several decades to bring about the reversal of the
separate but equal doctrine announced by the Supreme Court's decision in
Plessy v. Ferguson. Beginning by challenging segregation in state professional schools, then attacking Jim Crow at the college level, the campaign culminated in a unanimous Supreme Court decision in
Brown v. Board of Education that held that state-sponsored segregation of elementary schools was
unconstitutional.
Bolstered by that victory, the NAACP pushed for full desegregation throughout the South. Starting on
December 5,
1955, NAACP activists, including
E.D. Nixon, its local president, and
Rosa Parks, who had served as the chapter's Secretary, helped organize a
bus boycott in
Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregation on the city's
buses when two-thirds of the riders were black. The boycott lasted 381 days.
The State of Alabama responded by effectively barring the NAACP from operating within its borders for its refusal to divulge a list of its members, out of fear that they would be fired or face violent retaliation for their activities. While the Supreme Court eventually overturned the decision in
NAACP v. Alabama, the NAACP lost its leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement during those years to organizations such as the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that relied on direct action and mass mobilization, rather than litigation and legislation to advance the rights of African-Americans.
Roy Wilkins, its president at that time, clashed repeatedly with
Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders over questions of strategy and prestige within the movement.
At the same time, the NAACP used the Supreme Court's decision in Brown to press for desegregation of schools and public facilities throughout the country.
Daisy Bates, president of its
Arkansas state chapter, spearheaded the campaign by the
Little Rock Nine to
integrate the public schools in
Little Rock, Arkansas.
By the mid-1960s, the NAACP had regained some of its preeminence in the
Civil Rights Movement by pressing for civil rights legislation. The
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on
August 28,
1963. Congress passed a civil rights bill aimed at ending racial discrimination in employment, education and public accommodations in 1964, followed by a voting rights act in 1965.
After
Kivie Kaplan died in 1975,
Benjamin Hooks, a lawyer and clergyman, was elected the NAACP's executive director in 1977.
The 1990s: Crisis and restored strength
In the 1990s, the NAACP ran into debt, and the dismissal of two leading officials further added to the picture of an organization in deep crisis.
In 1993 the NAACP's Board of Directors narrowly selected Reverend
Benjamin Chavis over Reverend
Jesse Jackson to fill the position of Executive Secretary. A controversial figure, Chavis was ousted eighteen months later by the same board that hired him, accused of using NAACP funds for an out-of-court settlement in a sexual harassment lawsuit. [
2]
Following the dismissal of Chavis, Myrlie Evers-Williams narrowly defeated NAACP chairperson William Gibson in 1995, after Gibson was accused of overspending and mismanagement of the organization's funds. In 1996 Congressman
Kweisi Mfume a
Democratic Congressman from
Maryland and former head of the
Congressional Black Caucus, was named the organization's president. Three years later strained finances forced the organization to drastically cut its staff, from 250 in 1992 to just fifty.
However, in the second half of the 1990s, the organization restored its finances, permitting the NAACP National Voter Fund to launch a major get-out-the-vote offensive in the
2000 U.S. presidential elections. 10.5 million African Americans cast their ballots in the election, one million more than four years before, and the NAACP's effort was credited by observers as playing a significant role in handing Democrat
Al Gore several states where the election was close, such as
Pennsylvania and
Michigan.
Bush versus NAACP
During the 2000 presidential campaign, the NAACP's National Voter Fund ran a television ad against Bush. The ad featured the daughter of
James Byrd, a black man dragged to death by three white men in a pickup truck, blaming Bush for refusing her pleas for a hate-crime law when he was Texas governor.
In 2004, President
George W. Bush (2001—) became the first sitting U.S. president since
Herbert Hoover (1929–1933) not to address the NAACP when he declined an invitation to speak.[
3] The
White House originally said the president had a scheduling conflict with the NAACP convention, slated for
July 10-15, 2004.
However, on
July 10, 2004, Bush said he declined the invitation to speak to the NAACP because of harsh statements about him by its leaders. "I would describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically nonexistent. You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me." Bush also mentioned his admiration for some members of the NAACP and said he would seek to work with them "in other ways."
The
Internal Revenue Service informed the NAACP in October 2004 that it was undertaking an investigation into its tax-exempt status, focusing on a speech given by
Julian Bond at its 2004 Convention in which he criticized President
George W. Bush. The NAACP has denounced the investigation as political retaliation for its get-out-the-vote activities and has refused to supply the information concerning its activities that the IRS has demanded.
President Bush met with leaders from the NAACP on
December 7 2005 to discuss a wide range of issues.
On
July 20, 2006, after having rejected the civil rights group's invitations for five straight years, Bush addressed the NAACP, making a bid for increasing support for Republicans by African-Americans [
4].
1909 to 1939
1909: On
February 12, the National Negro Committee was formed. Founders included Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling.
1910: and the NAACP began court fights with the Pink Franklin case. It involved a black farmhand, who killed a policeman in self-defense when the officer broke into his home at 3 a.m. to arrest him on a civil charge.
1913: The NAACP protested
President Woodrow Wilson's official introduction of segregation to the federal government.
1914: Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise, and established the
Spingarn Medal, awarded annually for outstanding achievement by an African American.
1915: The NAACP organized a nationwide protest against
D.W. Griffith's racially inflammatory silent film,
Birth of a Nation.
1917: In
Buchanan v. Warley, the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can not restrict and officially segregate African Americans into residential districts. Also, the NAACP won a battle to enable African-Americans to be commissioned as officers in World War I. Six hundred officers were commissioned, and 700,000 black men registered for the draft.
1918: After pressure by the NAACP, President Woodrow Wilson made a public statement against
lynching.
1919: The NAACP sends Walter F. White to
Arkansas to investigate the murder of several hundred black tenant farmers in October. The NAACP organizes the appeals on behalf of more than a hundred African-American defendants convicted in mob-dominated judicial proceedings the following month.
1920: To ensure that everyone, especially the
Ku Klux Klan, knew the NAACP would not be intimidated, the annual conference was held in
Atlanta, considered one of the most active areas of the Klan.
1922: The NAACP placed large ads in major newspapers to present the facts about lynching.
1930: The first of successful protests by the NAACP against Supreme Court justice nominees is begun against John Parker, who favored laws that discriminated against African-Americans.
1935: NAACP lawyers
Charles Hamilton Houston and
Thurgood Marshall won a legal fight to admit Donald Gaines Murray, a black student, to the
University of Maryland Law School.
1939: the NAACP helped to organize an open air concert at the
Lincoln Memorial for the acclaimed
contralto Marian Anderson, where more than 75,000 people attended. Anderson had been barred from performing at both Constitution Hall by the
Daughters of the American Revolution and at a local white high school by the
District of Columbia, which was then under the control of the United States Congress and President
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1940: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) was founded.
1941: During
World War II, the NAACP took part in the effort to ensure that President
Franklin Roosevelt would order a nondiscrimination policy in war-related industries and federal employment.
1950 to 1990
1954: After years of fighting segregation in public schools, under the leadership of special counsel Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP won
Brown v. Board of Education. The historic U.S. Supreme Court decision barred school segregation.
1955: NAACP member and volunteer
Rosa Parks is arrested and fined for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in
Montgomery, Alabama. This action became a
catalyst for the largest grassroots civil rights movement in the U.S. It was spearheaded through the collective efforts of the NAACP,
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other black organizations.
1957: LDF spun off as a separate organization.
1960: In
Greensboro, North Carolina, members of the NAACP Youth Council started a series of nonviolent
sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. These protests eventually led to more than 60 stores officially desegregating their counters.
1963: After one of his many successful mass rallies for civil rights, the NAACP's first field director in Mississippi,
Medgar Evers, is assassinated in front of his home in
Jackson, Mississippi.
1963: The NAACP pushed for passage of the
Equal Employment Opportunity Act.
1964: The U.S. Supreme Court ended the eight-year effort of
Alabama officials to ban NAACP activities.
1965: Amidst threats of violence and efforts of state and local governments, the NAACP registered more than 80,000 voters in the
South.
1975 Margaret Bush Wilson, a St. Louis attorney, becomes thefirst African American female to chair the National Board of Directors.
1979: The NAACP initiates the first bill ever signed by a governor that allows voter registration in high schools. Soon after, twenty-four states followed suit.
1981: The NAACP led the effort to extend the
Voting Rights Act for another twenty-five years. To cultivate economic empowerment, the NAACP established the Fair Share Program with major corporations across the country.
1982: NAACP registered more than 850,000 voters
1989: the NAACP held a silent march of more than 100,000 people to protest U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have reversed many of the gains made against discrimination.
1990 forward
1991: When avowed Ku Klux Klan leader
David Duke ran for the
United States Senate in
Louisiana, the NAACP started a voter registration campaign that yielded a 76 percent turnout of black voters to defeat Duke.
1995: Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of Medgar Evers, was elected to lead the NAACP's board of directors.
1996: Kweisi Mfume left the
United States House of Representatives to become the president of the NAACP.
1996: Responding to anti-
affirmative action legislation occurring around the country, the NAACP started the Economic Reciprocity Program. Also, in response to increased violence among youth, the NAACP started the "Stop The Violence, Start the Love" campaign.
2000: Accomplishments include television diversity agreements and the largest black voter turnout in 20 years.
2002: The NAACP launches separate protests at the
Bi-Lo Center and the
Carolina Coliseum for hosting NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, respectively, and has the NCAA ban South Carolina based venues from hosting any future predetermined championship venues because of the Confederate Battle Flag on State House grounds. The Atlantic Coast Conference also prohibits Knights Castle, based in Fort Mill, South Carolina, from hosting the baseball tournament.
2005: Following the resignation of
Kweisi Mfume,
Bruce S. Gordon, a business executive, is chosen unanimously to become NAACP president.
2005: Civil rights pioneer and lifetime NAACP member
Rosa Parks dies, and her body lies in state in the rotunda of the
U.S. Capitol. She is the first woman ever to be so honored.
2006: The NAACP announces plans to move its national headquarters from Baltimore to
Washington DC. Board Chairman
Julian Bond said it is just more convenient for the organization to be in Washington.The move has been rumored since
Kweisi Mfume left the organization in 2004. The NAACP has been headquartered in
Baltimore since 1986. Bond says he told Mayor
Martin O'Malley about the move some time ago and he was disappointed.Bond says the organization is looking for a location in Washington and working on selling the property that houses its headquarters in northwest Baltimore.
* Richard Dalfiume, "The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution,"
Journal of American History 55 (June, 1969): 99-100. fulltext in JSTOR
* Fleming, Cynthia Griggs.
In the Shadow of Selma: The Continuing Struggle for Civil Rights in the Rural South Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. 349 pp.
* Goings, Kenneth W.
The NAACP Comes of Age: The Defeat of Judge John J. Parker (1990). late 1920s
* Hughes, Langston.
Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP (1962)
* Janken, Kenneth Robert.
White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP. New Press, 2003.
* Jonas, Gilbert S.
Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle against Racism in America, 1909-1969. Routledge, 2005. 240 pp.
* Lewis, David Levering.
W.E.B. DuBois (2 vol, 1994, 2001); Pulitzer Prize
* Mosnier, L. Joseph.
Crafting Law in the Second Reconstruction: Julius Chambers, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Title VII. U. of North Carolina, 2005. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is an entirely separate organization despite its similar name
* Barbara Joyce Ross,
J. E. Spingarn and the Rise of the NAACP, 1911-1939 (1972)
* Warren D. St. James,
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: A Case Study in Pressure Groups (1958)
* Mark Robert Schneider.
We Return Fighting: The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age (2001)
* Simon Topping; "'Supporting Our Friends and Defeating Our Enemies': Militancy and Nonpartisanship in the NAACP, 1936-1948,"
The Journal of African American History, Vol. 89, 2004
* Robert Zangrando,
The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909-1950 (1980)
*
Events on the NAACP timeline (1939 - Present)*
Association for the Study of African American Life and History*
Niagara Movement*
NAACP Image Award*
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund*
Racial integration*
Official site*
Anual ACT-SO Contest
