The NAACP Explained
The NAACP, short for the National Association for the Advancement of Colorred People, is one of the earliest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is based in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1905, a group of thirty-two prominent African American leaders met to discuss the challenges facing black people and to identify solutions and possible strategies for action. They were particularly concerned about the disenfranchisement of blacks in the southern United States, which had begun with the adoption of a new constitution in Mississippi in 1890. In the early twentieth century, state legislatures dominated by white Democrats ratified new constitutions and laws that introduced barriers to voter registration and more complex voting rules designed – successfully – to reduce black participation in elections. Men who had been able to vote for the previous thirty years were told that they were not ‘qualified’ to register. As the practice of segregation in the United States extended to hotels, the group met in Canada at the Erie Beach Hotel in Fort Erie on the Niagara River, hence the name Niagara Movement. A year later, journalist William English Walling and social workers Mary White Ovington and Henry Moskowitz, all three white, joined the group. The group met in Harper’s Ferry in 1906 and in Boston the following year.
How The NAACP Was Founded
The fledgling group struggled for some time with limited resources and internal divisions, and finally disbanded in 1910. Seven members of the Movement joined the board of the NAACP, which was founded in 1909. Although some members of both organizations overlapped for a time, the Niagara Movement was a separate organization with more radical ideas than the NAACP.
The Niagara Movement was formed by African Americans only; the meeting that led to the NAACP also included three Americans of European descent. The Springfield riot of 1908 is often cited as the catalyst that led to the formation of the NAACP. The organization was founded in New York in January 1909 by Mary White Ovington, the journalist William English Walling and Henry Moskowitz. They decided to organize a meeting on the following 12 February – the centenary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth – to which they invited around sixty personalities and asked them to join the association. Although the meeting took place three months after the appointed date, 12 February 1909 is often referred to as the founding date of the NAACP. Among those present were W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Oswald Garrison Villard, Florence Kelley, social reformer and friend of Du Bois, and Charles Edward Russell, who chaired the National Negro Committee. On 30 May 1909, a conference of the Niagara Movement was held in New York, at which the National Negro Committee was formed, which the following year changed its name to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, incorporating the association formed in February 1909. Moorfield Storey was elected national president; William English Walling chaired the executive committee; John E Milholland was appointed treasurer, assisted by Oswald Garrison Villard; Frances Blascoer became executive secretary; and Du Bois headed the association’s publicity and research department.
The aims of the association were described in the statutes as: “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 Efforts Of The NAACP
The conference led to a more diverse and influential organization under the leadership of predominantly Jewish Americans; only Du Bois was African American. It was not until 1975 that a black president was elected, although there had been several executive directors. The Jewish community was a major contributor to the funding of the NAACP. Joel Elias Spingarn, professor emeritus at Columbia University, led the organization from 1914, and Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf and Stephen Wise were involved. Jewish co-founders included Julius Rosenwald, Lillian Wald and Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch. Leaders of the US Jewish community had often pointed out the similarities, rather than the differences, between the hardships endured by Jews throughout history and those faced by African Americans, particularly in the southern United States. Allowing them to leave the ‘ghettos’ in which they were confined would have led to the advancement of the entire community and greater prosperity for Jews as well. Many of the white lawyers who became involved in the movement in the 1960s were Jewish, as were many of those who challenged Jim Crow laws in Mississippi in 1964. The NAACP joined the anti-lynching movement from its inception, helping to make the practice illegal throughout the United States in the 1930s. After the lynching of Jesse Washington in 1916, the NAACP set up a special committee and launched a campaign against the violence. Elisabeth Freeman, a suffragette appointed by the NAACP to investigate the case, provided a detailed account of Washington’s torture, published in The Crisis, the association’s magazine, accompanied by graphic pictures. The distribution of this report to newspapers and politicians contributed to widespread condemnation of the event, changing the response of the authorities and public opinion on the lynching. At a later stage, the NAACP adopted a different communication strategy, also highlighting the positive actions of the police in preventing lynchings.