NAACP

=National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP)=

Established 1909
//Oldest civil rights organisation representing equality for African-Americans.// The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) was created on February 12th,1909 as an organisation working to prevent discrimination against coloured people. It was founded by a multiracial group of activists' who decided to renew the struggle for equality and civil rights in an attempt to end the inequality and racism [|(NAACP)]. This decision of creating a civil rights association was spurred on by the Race Riots in 1908 in President Abraham Lincoln's home town of Springfield, Illinois.

The NAACP's first move was to start protesting against the Jim Crow laws [|(Jim Crow)]. These laws were the chains holding back black people in Southern States, despite laws coming out of the white house banishing racial discrimination. In 1913 It used the courts and public pressure to overturn Jim Crow Laws and started opposition the Then current president Woodrow Wilson who was introducing racial segregation into federal policies and laws.

Over the next ten years the support for the NAACP as the membership list grew from 9000 to 90,000 as the NAACP moved its efforts towards lynching in the south. This was during the Interwar years, the time between the two world wars. To show its distaste towards lynching the NAACP displayed a flag from its office window, reading " A Man Was Lynched Yesterday." By 1920, the NAACP had begun sudden advertising in local newspapers. These actions were to indicate to the public and the Ku Klux Klan that they were not intimidated by them. This was backed up by the NAACP having their annual conference in Atlanta in 1920. Up to WWII the NAACP focused on fighting court cases involving coloured people, making sure that the result was fair, however at the time, many judges in the southern states were discriminative in these cases.

During the 1940s pressure was put on President Roosevelt to deal with war related discrimination, such as discrimination in war industries and related employment. But it was the 50s that really brought many victories to the NAACP. In 1954, headed by their leading lawyer, the NAACP won a major legal victory in the decisive //Brown v Board of Education// case, which declared that segregation in schools didn't give blacks equal education opportunities. A year later, Rosa Parks, a NAACP member was arrested on a bus for not giving her seat to a white man. This sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and a huge step forward in defeating segregation on public transport. The NAACP continued to use the decision from the Brown case to put forward arguments against schools, to start desegregating their classes.

In 1964 the supreme court ends an wight year fight from Alabama officials to ban NAACP activities. Congress finally passes the Civil Rights Act, 55 years after the establishment of the NAACP. In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, and despite threats of violence, the NAACP still Managed to get 80,000 votes from blacks in southern states. In 1979 the NAACP initiated a bill that allowed voting registration in high schools. This was the first to be signed by a governor.

The 1980s allowed the NAACP to start tackled much larger issues and rallying greater numbers of people in protest. In 1989 the NAACP organized 100,000 protesters to partake in a silent march to protest the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the supreme court. These large protest groups allowed the NAACP to stop the election of David Duke to the senate. He was a former leader of the KKK and the vote count had a 76% black turn out and denied him the position.

The NAACP has been the building block of the civil movement, many key events involved the NAACP or had some link to them and this is what got America to where it is now.

[] [] [] [|http://www.wvu.edu/~lawfac/jscully/Race/resources.htm]