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Founding of NAACP
Founded Feb. 12. 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest, largest and most widely recognized grassroots-based civil rights organization. Its more than half-million members and supporters throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, campaigning for equal opportunity and conducting voter mobilization -
NAACP attacked sergregation
At the same time, the NAACP attacked segregation and racial inequality through the courts. It won a Supreme Court decision in 1915 against the grandfather clause (used by many southern states to prevent blacks from voting) and another in 1927 against the all-white primary. -
Field Secretary
In 1916, a new field secretary, James Weldon Johnson, began expanding the organization’s membership in the South. Johnson became the NAACP’s first black executive secretary in 1920, by which time membership had grown to ninety thousand, of which nearly half was in the South -
Leadership
Under his leadership, followed by that of Walter White (who served as secretary from 1930 to 1955), the NAACP became the dominant civil rights organization in the country, noted particularly for its work in publicizing the evils of Jim Crow discrimination and for its leadership in the fight for a federal antilynching law -
Other Civil Rights Groups
Though other civil rights groups emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, the NAACP retained a prominent role within the movement, co-organizing the 1963 March on Washington, and successfully lobbying for legislation that resulted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Act. -
Supreme Court
The 1954 Supreme Court decision on the case that reached it first–Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas)–declared segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. The decision was greeted with bitter hostility in the South, and among the reactions was a concerted attack–using both legal and illegal methods–on local NAACP branches. By 1957, its membership in the South had dropped from nearly half of the organization to 28 percent. -
Civil Rights Group
Other civil rights groups attracted more members in the South during the 1960s, many using direct mass action instead of the legal strategies pioneered by the NAACP. -
NAACP Broadened
In the late 1970s, the NAACP broadened its scope by committing itself to the struggle for equal rights around the world.
