What was the main purpose of the naacp at its founding?
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Many social movements come and go, but for more than a century the NAACP has been essential to struggles for racial justice and civil rights. Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People grew quickly, setting agendas and developing tactics that propelled the civil rights movement through the 20th century. Scholars emphasize the organization's national initiatives, the political lobbying and publicity efforts handled by the headquarters staff in New York and Washington D.C. and the brilliant court strategies developed by the legal team based for many years at Howard University. Show But from an early date, the NAACP was a grass roots organization with a mass membership based in hundreds of communities across the nation. NAACP local branches have always been key to the organization's endurance and effectiveness. When, in its early years, the national office launched campaigns against the vile racist movie, Birth of a Nation, it was the local branches that carried out the boycotts. When the organization fought to expose and outlaw the terrible crime of lynching, the branches carried the campaign into hundreds of communities. And while the NAACP Legal Defense Fund developed a federal court strategy of legal challenges to segregation, many branches fought discrimination using state laws and local political opportunities, sometimes winning important victories. Those victories were mostly achieved in Northern and Western states before World War II. When the Southern civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1940s and 1950s, credit goes both to the Legal Defense Fund attorneys and to the massive network of local branches that Ella Baker and other organizers had spread across the region. Most important, it was in the local organizations that the great work of building a culture of Black political activism was carried on. High rates of political engagement and activism of many different kinds has been the story in African American community life and the key to progress in civil rights struggles throughout the last century, and it has a lot to do with the persistent efforts of grass roots NAACP chapters. We are developing data and maps and charts that show the changing geography of NAACP grass roots activism. Below are several sets of visualizations. In addition, we are pleased to publish Reading "Along the Color Line" -- NAACP Reports from Black America in 1916 and 1917 an innovative project by Tyler Babbie. Here are six charts and maps showing the growth in membership and the spread of NAACP branches. Detailed membership numbers for individual chapters are shown for selected years. Charts show the changing regional distribution of branches. Six maps and databases provide fuller information about branch activities, officers, and membership. The first map shows branch activities in the first decade and a half, up to 1923. In addition, here are maps and searchable databases of branches, officers, and membership numbers for all available years 1912-1964. This interactive database accompanies the NAACP maps and charts. By Tyler Babbie In its early years, The Crisis, the NAACP’s monthly magazine edited by W.E.B Du Bois, sought to survey events of significance in African American communities across America. In a regular feature, initially called "Along the Color Line," Du Bois culled news from correspondents and published more than 100 short news reports each month under headings that included education, industry, political, church, military, personal, social uplift, and music and art. Here we map and display more than 1,800 entries published in 1916 and 1917. They provide a sampling of activities in several hundred Black communities during those pivotal years and tell us even more about what Du Bois’ wanted NAACP members to know about those activities.. Photo: NAACP The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 by W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, and Mary White Ovington and is recognized as the United States’ oldest civil rights organization (Behring Center, n.d.). The establishment of the NAACP was largely inspired by the 1908 Springfield, Illinois Race Riot and Du Bois’ Niagara Movement for civil rights, which began in 1905 (NAACP, n.d.). During the first seven years of the NAACP, growth was slow; however the nation-wide publishing and distribution of The Crisis, A Record of the Darker Races, accelerated membership growth (St. James, 1958). By 1918, the NAACP had 43,994 members with 165 branches in 38 states and in Canada and Panama (Finch, 1981). In 1910, W. E. B. Du Bois founded The Crisis, A Record of the Darker Races, a groundbreaking monthly magazine that discussed critical issues faced by African Americans, providing an avenue by which intellectual and artistic pieces could be disseminated (NAACP, n.d.). The Crisis was immediately successful; within its first year, The Crisis distributed 12,000 copies (St. James, 1958). Likewise, from 1920-1921, Du Bois published The Brownies’ Book, a children’s edition of The Crisis, which was the first periodical for black youth in U.S. history. The Crisis is considered to be a voice of the Harlem Renaissance, publishing works by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, amongst others (NAACP, n.d.). Photo: Library of Congress Digital ID cph 3a53178 Between 1920 and 1950, the NAACP had five primary agenda items: anti-lynching legislation, voter participation, employment, due process under the law, and education. The NAACP, dedicated to creating an integrated society, has consistently held an interracial leadership and predominantly African American membership (Behring Center, n.d.). They have been at the forefront of every significant civil rights struggle during the 20th century, using legal challenges, boycotts, and demonstration to fight for equal political, economic, and social rights for African Americans (George Washington University, n.d.). Photo: Library of Congress Digital ID cph 3c22432 Much of the NAACP’s work targeted national issues, using political action to secure civil rights legislation, public education programs to garner support, and direct action to achieve specific goals. For example, the NAACP helped to inspire President Woodrow Wilson to denounce lynching in 1918. Furthermore, in 1939, the NAACP created the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and independent legal arm of the original NAACP. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund successfully litigated major cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which resulted in school desegregation in 1954, and Morgan v. Virginia, which abolished segregation in interstate travel, setting the stage for the 1961 Freedom Rides (Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d.). Thurgood Marshall was the lead attorney for Brown v. Board of Education, and he later was appointed as the first African American in the Supreme Court (Smith, 2016). In the post-civil rights era, the NAACP continued rigourous lobbying and litigation, supporting the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and amendments to the Fair Housing Act and has worked against the confirmation of conservative judges to the Supreme Court. Throughout the 21st century, the NAACP has additionally focused on substance abuse, teen pregnancy, youth violence, African American economic enterprise, and voter registration campaigns. By 2009, the NAACP had over 500,000 members in 1,700 chapters and 450 college and youth chapters (Moore, 2008). This work may also be viewed through YouTube. This work may also be viewed through the Internet Archive. For Further Reading: The Brownies’ Book “How the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Began,” by Mary White Ovington, 1914. Issues of The Brownies’ Book Issues of The Crisis NAACP NAACPLDF NAACP: Celebrating a Century of 100 Years in Pictures, text by Julian Bond, Roger Wood Wilkins, Mildred Bond Roxborough, and India Artis, 2009. Photographs by NAACP. “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” by the Behring Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute “The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Long Struggle for Civil Rights in the United States,” by Susan Bragg “A Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States of America and an Appeal to the United Nations for Redress,” by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1947 References: Behring Center. (n.d.). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. National Museum of American History. Retrieved from http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/3-organized/naacp.html Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/National-Association-for-the-Advancement-of-Colored-People Finch, M. (1981). The NAACP: Its fight for justice. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press George Washington University. (n.d.). National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project. Retrieved from https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/naacp.cfm Moore, J. H. (2008). NAACP. In Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, (Vol. 2, pp. 335-342). New York, NY: Macmilan Publishers NAACP. (n.d.). Oldest and boldest. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Retrieved from http://www.naacp.org/oldest-and-boldest/ Smith, F. S. (2016). NAACP. In Religion and Politics in America: An Encyclopedia of Church and State in America. (Vol. 2, pp. 497-498). Santa Barba, CA: ABC-CLIO St. James, W. D. (1958). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: A case study in pressure groups. New York, NY: Exposition Press How to Cite this Article (APA Format): Paul, C. A. (2018). The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Social Welfare History Project. Retrieved from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/eras/national-associa…red-people-naacp/ What was the main purpose of the NAACP?Our mission is to achieve equity, political rights, and social inclusion by advancing policies and practices that expand human and civil rights, eliminate discrimination, and accelerate the well-being, education, and economic security of Black people and all persons of color.
What was the main purpose of the NAACP at its founding quizlet?It was founded in 1909, by Du Bois as a direct result of lynching. The main goals of the NAACP was to end segregation, equal civil rights under the law, and the end of racial violence such as lynching.
What was naacp and why was it formed and its purpose?The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B.
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