II.

History

Sixty people, black and white, convened on Abraham Lincoln's birthday (February 12) in 1909 to form the NAACP. The meeting was prompted by the extreme mistreatment of blacks in the United States, culminating in a riot in 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln's hometown. Whites of Springfield had attempted to remove black residents. For more than 30 years the NAACP conducted an unremitting campaign against lynching by pressuring the U.S. Congress and by a vigorous effort at public education.

In 1915 the NAACP organized a public boycott of Birth of a Nation, a motion picture by American film director D. W. Griffith that offered a biased view of black people. The association also secured the elimination of the so-called grandfather clause, a clause in the voting laws of certain Southern states that permitted only those persons to vote whose grandfathers had voted. Because the grandfathers of blacks had been slaves and so could not vote, this clause effectively denied enfranchisement to blacks.

Perhaps the most important single victory won by the NAACP was the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1954 declaring that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The several cases that had been considered by the Supreme Court in making its decision had been argued through the court system since 1939 by the legal arm of the NAACP, the Legal Defense and Education Fund. Aided by organized labor and by various minority-groups and civic organizations, the NAACP went on to lead the efforts that resulted in the enactment of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

In 1963 the NAACP mobilized its financial and human resources in preparation for what became the nation's greatest mass demonstration for civil rights, the August 28 “Jobs and Freedom” march on Washington, D.C., at which the key speaker was American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. In the late 1970s the NAACP became involved in the struggle for equal rights around the world. In the mid-1980s the organization protested apartheid, the official policy of segregation then in place in South Africa, and campaigned for economic sanctions against that country. The United States imposed economic sanctions on South Africa in 1986. Also in 1986 the NAACP moved its headquarters from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland.

During the 1980s the NAACP fostered economic opportunities by negotiating “fair-share agreements” with major firms on issues such as employment, promotions, and use of minority vendors. It also developed a national Back-to-School/Stay-in-School Program; encouraged the development of young people through its youth and college chapters; and initiated a long-range plan for involvement in nontraditional civil rights issues such as teenage pregnancy, poor academic performance, drug and substance abuse, and violence in the black community. In the early 1990s the NAACP launched the Environmental Justice Program to increase public awareness of industries located in minority communities. The organization also established the Voter Empowerment Program aimed at increasing voter education and registering black voters.

As the 21st century began the NAACP continued to see itself as an agent for social justice. It maintained the perspective that the struggle for civil rights for black Americans was far from complete.