It was formed in New York City by white and Black activists, partially in response to the ongoing violence against Black Americans around the country. In 1908, a deadly race riot rocked the city of Springfield, eruptions of anti-black violence particularly lynching were horrifically commonplace, but the Springfield riot was the final tipping point that led to the creation of the NAACP. Bethune was also the founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women and established its national office in Washington, D.C. She became one of the prominent figures in the National Association of Colored Women, where she would continue to campaign for the rights of all Americans. Booker T. Washington rejected this confrontational approach, but by the time of his death in 1915 his Tuskegee vision had lost influence among many African Americans. Its read more, Is there any good way to teach children about lynching? This coalition of twenty civil rights groups was formed to educate African Americans about new federal programs and protest discrimination in New Deal programs. Wells, Archibald Grimke and Mary Church Terrell. American newspaper. How did Felix Frankfurter stand on Brown v. Board of Education? The NAACP used publicity, protests, lawsuits, and the editorial pages of The Crisis to attack racial segregation, discrimination, and the lynching of blacks. The NAACP undertook its first major legal case in 1910 by defending Pink Franklin, a black South Carolina sharecropper accused of murder. One of the organization's key victories was the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of. Printed document. Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (033.00.00), Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/segregation-era.html#obj033. Significance: The NAACP defense team attacked the "equal" standard so that the "separate" standard would, in turn, become vulnerable. It is clear that Mrs. Roosevelt believed in aiding the antilynching cause, and she suggested various ways to win the support of members of Congress. The decision marked a legal turning point for the American civil-rights movement. He warned his colleagues soon after the verdict came down: The fight has just begun.. In 1962, Medgar Evers, the first NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, was assassinated outside his home in Jackson by a white supremacist. National Visionary Leadership Collection (AFC 2004/007), American Folklife Center. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. USA.gov, The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom, William English Walling, Chairman of the NAACP Executive Committee (19101911), Chain gang of convicts engaged in road work, Pitt County, North Carolina, Silent protest parade in New York City against the East St. Louis riots, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Governor Edwin P. Morrow Signing the Anthony AmendmentKentucky was the Twenty-Fourth State to Ratify, January 6, 1920, Daytona Beach, Florida, Bethune-Cookman College. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Frankfort, Kentucky: Gretter Studio, 1920. In the NAACPs early decades, its anti-lynching campaign was central to its agenda. As vice dean of Howard Law School, Houston trained a generation of civil rights lawyers. Google memorializes the Silent Parade when 10,000 black people protested lynchings. The organization received some criticism for its strategy of working through the judicial system and lawmakers to achieve its goals, rather than focusing on more direct methods of protest favored by other national civil rights groups. Eleanor Roosevelt to NAACP Secretary Walter White, March 19, 1936. By mid-year of his first term, Roosevelt had overseen the passage of bills designed to counteract the Depression, including the Agricultural Adjustment Act that paid white farmers not to produce crops. They are the onlytwo states that celebrate Martin Luther King and Robert E. Lees birth on the same day. During the Great Migration (19101920), African Americans by the thousands poured into industrial cities to find work and later to fill labor shortages created by World War I. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth. Library of Congress, https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/naacp. Naacp. By 1936, the majority of black voters had abandoned their historic allegiance to the Republican Party and joined with labor unions, farmers, progressives, and ethnic minorities in assuring President Roosevelts landslide re-election. In 1925, while heading the Department of Philosophy at Howard University, Locke edited a compendium of African American art, poetry, social essays, and historical commentary, titled The New Negro. The significant milestone is preceded by at least 240 failed attempts since 1901 to pass any bill or resolution mentioning lynching in Congress. Baltimore native Thurgood Marshall graduated from Howard Law School in 1933 and joined the NAACP as assistant counsel in 1936. Photograph, November 22, 1939. Cartoonist Clifford Berryman depicts President Franklin D. Roosevelt singing about economic recovery and New Deal programs. When Franklin did not show up for work after receiving an advance on his wages, a warrant was sworn for his arrest. White, a friend and adviser to First Lady and NAACP national board member Eleanor Roosevelt, met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to outlaw job discrimination in the armed forces, defense industries, and the agencies created by the New Deal. On July 1, 1917, two white policemen were killed in East St. Louis, Illinois, in a ruckus caused by marauders attacking homes of blacks in the area. Despite repeated opportunities in years to follow, such as the Costigan-Wagner Bill, Congress never passed any anti-lynching legislation. Definition. Edited by Alain Locke; book decoration and portraits by Winold Reiss (18861953). Typescript. This site is using cookies under cookie policy . Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans, especially in the wake of the 1908 Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot. Some were downgraded; others discharged on fictitious grounds. The threat of losing its lease forced the NAACP to discontinue the practice of flying the flag in 1938. Federal Law Against Lynchings, Speech of Hon. William English Wallings (18771936) expos about a bloody race riot in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincolns hometown and burial site, resulted in the assembly of an interracial group to discuss proposals for an organization that would advocate the civil and political rights of African Americans in January 1909. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (038.00.00), Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/segregation-era.html#obj037. Charles H. Houston to Walter White, May 24, 1938. In 1918 the NAACP hired White as assistant secretary at the national office on the recommendation of his mentor James Weldon Johnson. APEX User . Carl Iwasaki/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images. Moorfield Storey argued the case on behalf of the NAACP. President Roosevelt also set up a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to ensure compliance. Mary White Ovington (18651951), a social worker and freelance writer, was a principal NAACP founder and officer for almost forty years. Flag flown at NAACP headquarters, ca. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (021.00.00), Chain gang of convicts engaged in road work, Pitt County, North Carolina. NAACP membership grew rapidly, from around 9,000 in 1917 to around 90,000 in 1919, with more than 300 local branches. WATCH: Voices of Civil Rights on HISTORY Vault. Brown At 60 And Milliken At 40 . Walter Francis White. In 1936, he cofounded the National Negro Congress, a coalition of 585 organizations. NAACP The upshot: Students of color in America would no longer be forced by law to attend traditionally under-resourced Black-only schools. As the Supreme Court has grown increasingly polarized along political lines, both conservative and liberal justices have claimed the legacy of Brown v. Board to argue different sides in the constitutional debate. These attempts to outlaw lynching peaked read more, Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Partys Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans. Echoing the focus of Du Bois' Niagara Movement for civil rights, which began in 1905, NAACP aimed 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, provide equal protection of the law, and the right for all men to vote, respectively. The result? NAACP Records, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (020.00.00), Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/segregation-era.html#obj020. While touching on the general social, political, and economic climate in which the NAACP acted, Mark V. Tushnet emphasizes the internal workings of the organization as revealed in its own documents. As their numbers increased, their vote emerged as a crucial factor in elections. Governor Edwin P. Morrow Signing the Anthony AmendmentKentucky was the Twenty-Fourth State to Ratify, January 6, 1920. Despite such dramatic courtroom and congressional victories, the implementation of civil rights was a slow, painful, and oft times violent process. Memorandum. In 1965, he founded the A. Philip Randolph Institute with Bayard Rustin, another nonviolent, direct-action strategist. He was the organization's executive secretary from 1931 to 1955. 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