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NAACP
Founded
Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and
most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization.
Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout
the United States and the world are the premier advocates for
civil rights in their communities, campaigning for equal opportunity
and conducting voter mobilization.
Founding
group
The NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing
horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield,
the capital of Illinois and resting place of President Abraham
Lincoln. Appalled at the violence that was committed against
blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White
Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants
of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz
issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some
60 people, seven of whom were African American (including
W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell),
signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's
birth.
Other
early members included Joel and Arthur Spingarn, Josephine
Ruffin, Mary Talbert, Inez Milholland, Jane Addams, Florence
Kelley, Sophonisba Breckinridge, John Haynes Holmes, Mary
McLeod Bethune, George Henry White, Charles Edward Russell,
John Dewey, William Dean Howells, Lillian Wald, Charles Darrow,
Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Fanny Garrison Villard,
and Walter Sachs.
Echoing
the focus of Du Bois' Niagara Movement began in 1905, the
NAACP's stated goal was to secure for all people the rights
guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United
States Constitution, which promised an end to slavery, the
equal protection of the law, and universal adult male suffrage,
respectively.
The
NAACP's principal objective is to ensure the political, educational,
social and economic equality of minority group citizens of
United States and eliminate race prejudice. The NAACP seeks
to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through the
democratic processes.
The NAACP established its national office in New York City
in 1910 and named a board of directors as well as a president,
Moorfield Storey, a white constitutional lawyer and former
president of the American Bar Association. The only African
American among the organization's executives, Du Bois was
made director of publications and research and in 1910 established
the official journal of the NAACP, The Crisis.
The
Crisis
Du Bois founded The Crisis magazine as the premier crusading
voice for civil rights. Today, The Crisis, one of the oldest
black periodicals in America, continues this mission. A respected
journal of thought, opinion and analysis, the magazine remains
the official publication of the NAACP and is the NAACP's articulate
partner in the struggle for human rights for people of color.
In time, The Crisis became a voice of the Harlem Renaissance,
as Du Bois published works by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen
and other African American literary figures. The publication's
prominence would rise.
Now
published quarterly, The Crisis is dedicated to being an open
and honest forum for discussing critical issues confronting
people of color, American society and the world in addition
to highlighting the historical and cultural achievements of
these diverse peoples.
In
essays, interviews, in-depth reporting, etc., writers explore
past and present issues concerning race and its impact on
educational, economic, political, social, moral, and ethical
issues. And, each issue is highlighted with a special section,
"The NAACP Today" reporting the news and events
of the NAACP on a local and national level.
Growth
With a strong emphasis on local organizing, by 1913 the NAACP
had established branch offices in such cities as Boston, Massachusetts;
Baltimore, Maryland; Kansas City, Missouri; Washington, D.C.;
Detroit, Michigan; and St. Louis, Missouri.
Joel
Spingarn, one of the NAACP founders, was a professor of literature
and formulated much of the strategy that led to the growth
of the organization. He was elected board chairman of the
NAACP in 1915 and served as president from 1929-1939.
A
series of early court battles, including a victory against
a discriminatory Oklahoma law that regulated voting by means
of a grandfather clause (Guinn v. United States, 1910), helped
establish the NAACP's importance as a legal advocate. The
fledgling organization also learned to harness the power of
publicity through its 1915 battle against D. W. Griffith's
inflammatory Birth of a Nation, a motion picture that perpetuated
demeaning stereotypes of African Americans and glorified the
Ku Klux Klan.
NAACP
membership grew rapidly, from around 9,000 in 1917 to around
90,000 in 1919, with more than 300 local branches. Writer
and diplomat James Weldon Johnson became the Association's
first black secretary in 1920, and Louis T. Wright, a surgeon,
was named the first black chairman of its board of directors
in 1934.
The
NAACP waged a 30-year campaign against lynching, among the
Association's top priorities. After early worries about its
constitutionality, the NAACP strongly supported the federal
Dyer Bill, which would have punished those who participated
in or failed to prosecute lynch mobs. Though the bill would
pass the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate never passed
the bill, or any other anti-lynching legislation. Most credit
the resulting public debate-fueled by the NAACP report "Thirty
Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1919"-with
drastically decreasing the incidence of lynching.
Johnson
stepped down as secretary in 1930 and was succeeded by Walter
F. White. White was instrumental not only in his research
on lynching (in part because, as a very fair-skinned African
American, he had been able to infiltrate white groups), but
also in his successful block of segregationist Judge John
J. Parker's nomination by President Herbert Hoover to the
U.S. Supreme Court.
White
presided over the NAACP's most productive period of legal
advocacy. In 1930 the association commissioned the Margold
Report, which became the basis for the successful reversal
of the separate-but-equal doctrine that had governed public
facilities since 1896's Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1935 White
recruited Charles H. Houston as NAACP chief counsel. Houston
was the Howard University law school dean whose strategy on
school-segregation cases paved the way for his protégé
Thurgood Marshall to prevail in 1954's Brown v. Board of Education,
the decision that overturned Plessy.
During
the Great Depression of the 1930s, which was disproportionately
disastrous for African Americans, the NAACP began to focus
on economic justice. After years of tension with white labor
unions, the Association cooperated with the newly formed Congress
of Industrial Organizations in an effort to win jobs for black
Americans. White, a friend and adviser to First Lady--and
NAACP national board member--Eleanor Roosevelt, met with her
often in attempts to convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt
to outlaw job discrimination in the armed forces, defense
industries and the agencies spawned by Roosevelt's New Deal
legislation.
Roosevelt
ultimately agreed to open thousands of jobs to black workers
when labor leader A. Philip Randolph, in collaboration with
the NAACP, threatened a national March on Washington movement
in 1941. President Roosevelt also agreed to set up a Fair
Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to ensure compliance.
Throughout
the 1940s the NAACP saw enormous growth in membership, recording
roughly 600,000 members by 1946. It continued to act as a
legislative and legal advocate, pushing for a federal anti-lynching
law and for an end to state-mandated segregation.
Civil
Rights Era
By the 1950s the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,
headed by Marshall, secured the last of these goals through
Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation
in public schools. The NAACP's Washington, D.C., bureau, led
by lobbyist Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., helped advance not only
integration of the armed forces in 1948 but also passage of
the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968, as well as
the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Despite
such dramatic courtroom and congressional victories, the implementation
of civil rights was a slow, painful, and oft times violent.
The unsolved 1951 murder of Harry T. Moore, an NAACP field
secretary in Florida whose home was bombed on Christmas night,
and his wife was just one of many crimes of retribution against
the NAACP and its staff and members.
NAACP Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers and his wife
Myrlie also became high-profile targets for pro-segregationist
violence and terrorism. In 1962, their home was firebombed
and later Medgar was assassinated by a sniper in front of
their residence following years of investigations into hostility
against blacks and participation in non-violent demonstrations
such as sit-ins to protest the persistence of Jim Crow segregation
throughout the south.
Violence
also met black children attempting to enter previously segregated
schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, and other southern cities.
Throughout the south many African Americans were still denied
the right to register and vote.
The
Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s echoed the NAACP's
goals, but leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, felt that direct
action was needed to obtain them.
Although
it was criticized for working exclusively within the system
by pursuing legislative and judicial solutions, the NAACP
did provide legal representation and aid to members of other
protest groups over a sustained period of time. The NAACP
even posted bail for hundreds of Freedom Riders in the ‘60s
who had traveled to Mississippi to register black voters and
challenge Jim Crow policies.
Led
by Roy Wilkins, who succeeded Walter White as secretary in
1955, the NAACP, along with A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin
and other national organizations began to plan the 1963 March
on Washington.
With
the passage of major civil rights legislation the following
year, the Association accomplished what seemed an insurmountable
task. In the following years, the NAACP began to diversify
its goals.
Assisting
the NAACP throughout the years were many celebrities and leaders,
including Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Harry
Belafonte, Ella Baker, an NAACP director of branches who stressed
the importance of young people and women in the organization
by recruiting members, raising money, and organizing local
campaigns; Daisy Bates, NAACP national board member, Arkansas
state conference president and advisor to the Little Rock
Nine; and NAACP stalwarts like Kivie Kaplan, a businessman
and philanthropist from Boston, who served as president of
the NAACP from 1966 until 1975. He personally led nationwide
NAACP Life Membership efforts and fought to keep African Americans
away from illegal drugs.
Close
of the first century
Wilkins
retired as executive director in 1977 and was replaced by
Benjamin L. Hooks, whose tenure included the Bakke case (1978),
in which a California court outlawed several aspects of affirmative
action. During his tenure the Memphis native is credited with
implementing many NAACP programs that continue today. The
NAACP ACT-SO (Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific
Olympics) competitions, a major youth talent and skill initiative,
and Women in the NAACP began under his administration.
As
millions of African Americans continued to be afflicted as
urban poverty and crime increased, de facto racial segregation
remained and job discrimination lingered throughout the United
States, proving the need for continued NAACP advocacy and
action.
Dr.
Hooks served as executive director/chief executive officer
(CEO) of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992. Benjamin F. Chavis (now
Chavis Muhammad) became executive director/CEO in 1993, while
in 1995 Myrlie Evers-Williams (widow of Medgar Evers) became
the third woman to chair the NAACP, a position she held until
1998, succeeded by Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond.
In
1996 the NAACP National Board of Directors changed the executive
director/CEO title to president and CEO when it selected Kweisi
Mfume, a former congressman and head of the Congressional
Black Caucus, to lead the body. The elected office of president
was eliminated.
Former
telecommunications executive Bruce S. Gordon followed in 2005.
[NAACP General Counsel Dennis Courtland Hayes would serve
the Association well as interim national president and CEO
twice during changes in administrations in recent years.]
In
May 2008, the NAACP National Board of Directors confirmed
Benjamin Todd Jealous, a former community organizer, newspaper
editor and Rhodes Scholar, as the 14th national executive
of the esteemed organization.
Heading
into the 21st century, the NAACP is focused on disparities
in economics, health care, education, voter empowerment and
the criminal justice system while also continuing its role
as legal advocate for civil rights issues.
Yet
the real story of the nation's most significant civil rights
organization lies in the hearts and minds of the people who
would not stand idly by while the rights of America's darker
citizens were denied. From bold investigations of mob brutality,
protests of mass murders, segregation and discrimination,
to testimony before congressional committees on the vicious
tactics used to bar African Americans from the ballot box,
it was the talent and tenacity of NAACP members that saved
lives and changed many negative aspects of American society.
While
much of NAACP history is chronicled in books, articles, pamphlets
and magazines, the true movement lies in the faces--the diverse
multiracial army of ordinary women and men from every walk
of life, race and class--united to awaken the consciousness
of a people and a nation. The NAACP will remain vigilant in
its mission until the promise of America is made real for
all Americans.
naacp.org
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