Founded on February 12th, 1909, the NAACP, or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored, was built to uphold the Constitutional Rights of all citizens in the United States, regardless of race. Inspired by the frequent lynching of black men and the race riots of 1908 in Springfield Illinois, the NAACP was created to specifically protect the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and was attempting in its inception to protect "universal adult male suffrage." This organization was spearheaded by W.E.B. DuBois, the nation's forefront African American civil rights leader at the time, and along with the creation of The Crisis, led to increased black awareness of the rights they had.
The Crisis, a magazine created by W.E.B. DuBois was the first publication that published almost exclusively the works of black Americans and was and still is the official publication of the NAACP. Through this magazine, greats such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen were able to express their art in a publication designed to help them. Within just four years of its inception, the NAACP was able to have offices in six cities across the country, all the way from Kansas City to Boston. Its supporters grew from just 9,000 people in 1917 to almost 90,000 people in two years.
Perhaps the most important work the NAACP did early on in the 1930s was the Margold Report. Created by Nathan Margold, the Margold Report was the comprehensive step in dismantling the horrible clause "separate but equal" and reversing the decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Rather than tackling the clause on a broad scale, the NAACP focused specifically on the segregation within schools and how black students were not receiving equal education like the white students in the same towns/cities. Charles Hamilton Houston adapted this idea even further by proving the legal basis of the separate but equal doctrine that should be deemed unconstitutional by using the 14th and 15th amendments and then show how black students were set at an inherent disadvantage compared to white students.
During the Great Depression, which disproportionally disenfranchised the already disenfranchised African communities in the US, the NAACP focused almost all their efforts on economic justice for all people. With the help of NAACP-national board member and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, they were able to help attack her husband's new New Deal job opportunities and bring less racial discrimination when it came to hiring and working in the armed forces. Thanks to the president's help and the organization's national presence, the NAACP had over 600,000 members by the end of World War II.
Even before the Civil Rights Movement came into the public in the late 40s and early 50s, the NAACP had been working for decades to bring national equality to all black people in the US. They were responsible for laying the groundwork that Dr. King was able to use to help bring this dream into reality, and what eventually led to the overturn of the "separate but equal" doctrine with the landmark case, Brown V. Board of Education.
Sources:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/3-organized/higher-education.html
http://www.naacp.org/oldest-and-boldest/
Nice post Noah. I think it is really cool that the NAACP is actually still around today and is still working for greater equality among citizens. I never knew that MLK was a member of the NAACP, but it turns out that his involvement with them goes back to the 1950's when he was on the executive committee of the Montgomery branch. Further, Eleanor Roosevelt's involvement intriguing to me. Even thought the post was not about her, I think the fact that she worked against her husband's policies to provide greater opportunities for blacks is something really amazing.
ReplyDeleteGood job Noah, I really enjoyed your post. I felt like we didn't cover the NAACP as much as we could have in class, so this post was exactly what I needed to learn more about the organization and its contributions. While doing my own research for my post, I found some interesting information. I discovered that Clarence Darrow, the criminal and labor lawyer, was a founding attorney of the NAACP. He was a firm believer in civil liberties and rights for African-Americans, so his contribution to its inception makes sense. However, I'd like to know more about how he joined Dubois in his efforts to create the organization. Also, I wonder what kind of actions on behalf of the NAACP in the nascent years of the organization? Perhaps the Sweets trial? Perhaps he was simply a founding member and not a major official? I'll have to research more and find out.
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