What is the NAACP?
The NAACP is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP was started 12 February 1909 as an organization to promote the rights of minorities. The NAACP consists of different departments that are concerned with various aspects of minority rights such as legal, education and employment.
The NAACP was created by a group of white people inspired by W.E.B. De Bois and the Niagara Movement. W.E.B. De Bois was the first black person in the United States to earn a doctorate degree from Harvard. De Bois had a book, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903 and led an anti-segregation movement that was called the Niagara Movement. The Niagara Movement started because not one American hotel would allow the group of black men to register, so they stayed on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.
De Bois became the NAACP's director and edited the NAACP publication called Crisis. The white people that created the NAACP included philosopher John Dewey, social worker Jane Adams, editor Oswald Garrison Villard and novelist William Dean Howells. Although the NAACP is best known for its work promoting the rights of African-Americans, the organization, with headquarters in Maryland, also promotes the rights of other minorities such as Native Americans, Asian-Americans and Jewish Americans.
In 1919, the NAACP held a symposium about lynching and published a report entitled "Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States: 1889 - 1918." The NAACP supported Missouri Congressman Leonidas C. Dyer's proposed federal anti-lynching bill. The bill did pass the House on 26 January 1922, but not the Senate. It was not until the year 2005 that the United States senate issued a formal apology for not passing Dyer's bill or similar anti-lynching bills.
The NAACP was strongly involved in the Harlem Renaissance that encouraged black Americans to make artistic and intellectual contributions to society. The Harlem Renaissance saw many black Americans become published authors and celebrated artists, singers and dancers throughout the 1920s and the early 1930s. During the Great Depression, the NAACP began to focus on minorities struggling in poverty situations.
Written by Sheri Cyprus
