National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
American organization
interracial American organization created to work for the abolition of segregation and discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation; to oppose racism; and to ensure African Americans their constitutional rights. The NAACP was created in 1909 by an interracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois (Du Bois, W.E.B.), Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (Wells-Barnett, Ida Bell), Mary White Ovington (Ovington, Mary White), and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans, especially in the wake of the 1908 Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot (Springfield Race Riot). Some of the founding members had been associated with the Niagara Movement, a civil rights group led by Du Bois.
Many of the NAACP's actions have focused on national issues; for example, the group helped persuade President Woodrow Wilson to denounce lynching in 1918. Other areas of activism have involved political action to secure enactment of civil rights (civil rights movement) laws, programs of education and public information to win popular support, and direct action to achieve specific goals. In 1939 the NAACP established as an independent legal arm for the civil rights movement the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which litigated to the Supreme Court Board of Education of Topeka (Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka), the case that resulted in the high court's landmark 1954 school-desegregation decision. The organization had also won a significant victory in 1946, with Morgan v. Virginia, which successfully barred segregation in interstate travel, setting the stage for the Freedom Rides of 1961.The murder of NAACP field director Medgar Evers (Evers, Medgar) in 1963 gave the group national prominence, likely contributing to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In the 1980s the NAACP publicized opposition to apartheid policies in South Africa. The organization moved its headquarters from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland, in 1986. It also operates a bureau in Washington, D.C., and has branch offices in dozens of cities across the United States. At the turn of the 21st century, the NAACP sponsored campaigns against youth violence, encouraged economic enterprise among African Americans, and led voter drives to increase participation in the political process.