NAACP Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. It was founded in 1909, to work on behalf of black people. Members of the NAACP have referred to it as The National Association. This usage suggests NAACP's perceived preeminence among organizations active in the American civil rights movement; little need was felt to specify which "national association."
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2 History 3 Influential court cases 4 Critics and supporters 5 Contact information 6 See also 7 References 8 External links 9 Sources and further reading |
Organization
The NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, and it has regional offices in California, New York, Michigan, Missouri, Georgia, Texas, and Maryland. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating efforts of state conferences in the states included in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members.
At the national level, the NAACP is governed by a 64-member board of directors led by a chairman. The board elects one person as the president and chief executive officer for the organization. As of 2004, the organization's president is Kweisi Mfume, who has served as the leader since February 1996, and the chairman is Julian Bond.
Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action. Local chapters are supported by the Branch and Field Services department and the Youth and College department. The Legal Department focuses on court cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government, or education. The Washington, D.C bureau is responsible for lobbying the U.S. Government. The Education Department works to improve public education at the local, state and federal levels. The goal of the Health Division is to advance health care for minorities through public policy and education.
As of 2004 the NAACP has approximately 500,000 members.
The NAACP was founded as the National Negro Committee on February 12, 1909, by a multiracial group of political activists including W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, and William English Walling. DuBois edited the association's magazine, The Crisis, which reached more than 30,000 people.
By 1914, the group had 6,000 members and 50 branches, and it was influential in winning the right of African-Americans to serve as officers in World War I. Six hundred African-American officers were commissioned, and 700,000 registered for the draft. The next year, the NAACP organized a nationwide protest against D.W. Griffith's silent film "Birth of a Nation." The film was criticised as being racist and bigoted.
In 1917, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Buchanan v. Warley that states cannot officially segregate African-Americans into separate residential districts.
By the mid-1960s, the NAACP was spearheading the American civil rights movement. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963. Action continued through the '60s and '70s.
After Kivie Kaplan died in 1975, Benjamin Hooks, a lawyer and clergyman, was elected the NAACP's executive director in 1977.
In a 1993 the Board narrowly selected Reverend Benjamin Chavis over Reverend Jesse Jackson to fill the position of Executive Secretary. A controversial figure, Chavis was ousted eighteen months later by the same board that hired him, accused of using NAACP funds for an out of court settlement in a sexual harassment lawsuit. [1]
Following the dismissal of Chavis, NAACP chairperson William Gibson was voted out of office in 1995, accused of overspending and mismanagement of the organization’s funds. Gibson was narrowly defeated by Myrlie Evers-Williams. In 1996 Congressman Kweisi Mfume (a Democrat from Maryland), former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, was named the organization’s president.
The strained economical situation forced the organization to drastically cut its staff, from 250 in 1992 to just 50 three years later. But in the second half of the 1990s, the organization restored its financial muscle, permitting the NAACP National Voter Fund to launch a major get-out-the-vote offensive in the 2000 U.S. presidential elections. 10.5 million African Americans cast their ballots in the election, one million more than four years earlier, and the NAACP's effort was credited by observers as playing a significant role in handing Democrat Al Gore several states where the election was close, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan.
1909: On February 12, the National Negro Committee was formed. Founders included Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling.
1910: The NAACP began court fights with the Pink Franklin case. It involved a black farmhand, who unbeknowingly killed a policeman in self-defense when the officer broke into his home at 3 a.m. to arrest him on a civil charge.
1913: The NAACP protested President Woodrow Wilson's official introduction of segregation to the federal government.
1915: The NAACP organizes a nationwide protest against D.W. Griffith's racially inflammatory and bigoted silent film, "Birth of a Nation."
1917: In Buchanan v. Warley, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states can not restrict and officially segregate African Americans into residential districts. Also, the NAACP won a battle to enable African-Americans to be commissioned as officers in World War I. Six hundred officers were commissioned, and 700,000 black men registered for the draft.
1918: After pressure by the NAACP, President Woodrow Wilson made a public statement against lynching.
1920: To ensure that everyone, especially the Ku Klux Klan, knew the NAACP would not be intimidated, the annual conference was held in Atlanta, considered one of the most active areas of the Klan.
1922: The NAACP placed large ads in major newspapers to present the facts about lynching.
1930: The first of successful protests by the NAACP against Supreme Court justice nominees is begun against John Parker, who favored laws that discriminated against African-Americans.
1935: NAACP lawyers Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall won a legal fight to admit a black student to the University of Maryland.
1939: After the Daughters of the American Revolution barred acclaimed soprano Marian Anderson from performing at their Constitution Hall, the NAACP moved her concert to the Lincoln Memorial, where more than 75,000 people attended.
1940: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) was founded.
1941: During World War II, the NAACP led the effort to ensure that President Franklin Roosevelt would order a nondiscrimination policy in war-related industries and federal employment.
1954: After years of fighting segregation in public schools, under the leadership of special counsel Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP won Brown v. Board of Education. The decision barred school segregation.
1955: NAACP member and volunteer Rosa Parks is arrested and fined for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. This action became a catalyst for the largest grassroots civil rights movement in the U.S. It was spearheaded through the collective efforts of the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other black organizations.
1957: LDF spun out as a separate organization.
1960: In Greensboro, North Carolina, members of the NAACP Youth Council started a series of nonviolent sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. These protests eventually led to more than 60 stores officially desegregating their counters.
1963: After one of his many successful mass rallies for civil rights, the NAACP's first field director, Medgar Evers, is assassinated in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
1963: The NAACP pushed for passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.
1964: The U.S. Supreme Court ended the eight-year effort of Alabama officials to ban NAACP activities.
1965: Amidst threats of violence and efforts of state and local governments, the NAACP registered more than 80,000 voters in the South.
1979: The NAACP initiates the first bill ever signed by a governor that allows voter registration in high schools. Soon after, 24 states followed suit.
1981: The NAACP led the effort to extend the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. To cultivate economic empowerment, the NAACP established the Fair Share Program with major corporations across the country.
1982: NAACP registered more than 850,000 voters, and through its protests and the support of the Supreme Court, it prevented President Ronald Reagan from giving a tax break to the racially segregated Bob Jones University.
1985: The NAACP led a major anti-apartheid rally in New York City.
1985: Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of Medgar Evers, was elected to lead the NAACP's board of directors.
1989: the NAACP held a silent march of more than 100,000 people to protest U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have reversed many of the gains made against discrimination.
1996: Kweisi Mfume left the U.S. House of Representatives to become the president of the NAACP.
1996: Responding to anti-affirmative action legislation occurring around the country, the NAACP started the Economic Reciprocity Program. Also, in response to increased violence among youth, the NAACP started the "Stop The Violence, Start the Love" campaign.
2000: Accomplishments include television diversity agreements and the largest black voter turnout in 20 years.
2000: On January 17, in Columbia, South Carolina, more than 50,000 people attended a march to protest the flying of the Confederate battle flag. It was the largest civil rights demonstration ever held in the South to date.
NAACP supporters cite the disproportionate effect of gun violence on minority communities, and believe that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution is intended to protect the right of a state to maintain a militia, not unrestricted individual rights to bear arms.
However, on July 10, 2004, Bush said he declined the invitation to speak to the NAACP because of harsh statements about him by its leaders. "I would describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically nonexistent. You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me." Bush also mentioned his admiration for some members of the NAACP and said he would seek to work with them "in other ways."
This is an Article on NAACP. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About NAACP History
Fighting Jim Crow
In its early years, the NAACP focused attention on using the courts to overturn Jim Crow laws, which established racial discrimination. In 1913, the NAACP organized opposition to President Woodrow Wilson's introduction of Jim Crow segregation to the federal government. Desegregation
Bolstered by court wins, starting in the 1950s, the NAACP pushed beyond voting rights for full desegregation of the races. Starting on December 5, 1955, the NAACP organized a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregation in the city's bus system when 66 percent of the riders were black. The boycott lasted 381 days.The 1990s: Crisis and restored strength
In the 1990s, the NAACP ran into debt, and the dismissal of two leading officials further added to the picture of an organization in deep crisis. Timeline
1909 to 1949
1950 to 1990
1990 and on
1991: When avowed Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke ran for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana, the NAACP started a voter registration campaign that yielded a 76 percent turnout of black voters to defeat Duke.Influential court cases
Critics and supporters
Some critics of the NAACP, particularly conservatives, complain that the organization takes liberal positions on issues which either have no obvious relationship to the civil rights struggle or minorities, or which they believe to be at odds with the cause of freedom (the NAACP strongly supports stringent gun control laws, for example).Bush declines to speak to the NAACP
In 2004, President George W. Bush (2001—) became the first sitting U.S. president since Herbert Hoover (1929-1933) not to address the NAACP when he declined an invitation to speak. The White House originally said the president had a scheduling conflict with the NAACP convention, slated for July 10-15, 2004. Contact information
See also
References
External links
Sources and further reading