NAACP

NAACP

NAACP

Introduction

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is an organization whose purpose is to use the legal system of the United States to force the government to provide civil rights equitably to U.S. blacks. It came into being in reaction to the violent racism that plagued the United States at the time. After the end of Reconstruction allowed the imposition of de facto and then de jure segregation, African Americans lost many of the legal protections established by laws and amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Violence against blacks became common as lynching reached epidemic proportions. Economic and social discrimination increased. Blacks found themselves second-class citizens or worse in white America. Black leaders were in a quandary over how their people should handle the deteriorated situation. In 1895 educator Booker T. Washington, the most prominent black of his time, proposed that African Americans should accommodate. They should allow segregation to continue while they used self-help to develop their own society and to improve their economic condition. Washington hoped that U.S. society would notice the gradual improvement and come to accept black participation in the white political and social systems. Washington established the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama as a segregated vocational school to teach blacks practical skills they needed for everyday life (Van, pp. 13).

Not all black leaders agreed with Washington's accommodations. Some looked at the increase in poverty and the backwardness of a Jim Crow system as separate and blatantly unequal. They also noted the outrageousness of hundreds of lynchings a year. They regarded Washington as a tool of the white system. Among the critics who engaged Washington in a long debate was the intellectual W. E. B. DuBois.For over a decade the debate continued as black Americans suffered. Then in 1905 DuBois and William Monroe Trotter called a meeting at Niagara Falls, Canada. The meeting led to the formation of the Niagara movement, which rejected Washington's gradualist accommodationism and called for vigilance and protest. The Niagara movement was premature. Washington was too powerful. By 1908 the movement was history. Its message, however, lingered: There would be no more appeasement of white racism by black Americans.

Foundation of NAACP

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is an organization whose purpose is to use the legal system of the United States to force the government to provide civil rights equitably to U.S. blacks. It came into being in reaction to the violent racism that plagued the United States at the time.After the end of Reconstruction allowed the imposition of de facto and then de jure segregation, African Americans lost many of the legal protections established by laws and amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Violence against blacks became common as lynching reached epidemic proportions. Economic and social discrimination increased. Blacks found themselves second-class citizens or worse in white America. Black leaders were in a quandary over how their people should handle the deteriorated situation.

Litigation of NAACP

With DuBois and the economic radicals out of the picture, the NAACP under President Walter White used the resources of the NAACP legal ...