The Beginning OF EVERYTHING
1910 On May 30, the members had a conference and changed the organization from the National Negros Committee to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP). The NAACP was officially founded in New York. W.E.B. Dubois created a magazine The Crisis for
would discuss current-then major events. Today, the magazine is still currently publishing in hard copies and through the Internet.
There were many positions that were distributed in the organization. The first president of the NAACP was Moorfield Story. He was an American attorney, publicist, and a civil rights leader. William English Walling was selected by the executive committee to be a chairman, and John Milholland who was the founder of the Constitution League was picked to be the organization's treasurer. Oswald Garrison Villard was selected to be the assistant treasurer, and Miss Frances Blasoer became the secretary with most of the control of the NAACP. Joel Spingarn was an American professor, critic of literature, former chairman of the comparative literature at the Columbia University, and a civil rights activist.
“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American...” 1911The Spingarn family became especially involved in the organization. During January, Joel Spingarn was appointed as a chairman of the newly created and organized branch of the association in New York. Joel Spingarn's brother was Arthur B. Spingarn who was known as a very well-respected attorney. Arthur B. Spingarn became active in the NAACP, so he later on became a committee member of the same branch's committee. Arthur B. Spingarn with his profession helped the NAACP with several cases of inequality and discrimination toward the African Americans in the urban areas, and he also made legal claims on the behalf of the victims of those hate crimes.
1912The NAACP was very preoccupied with activities in the legal system. Judge Hook was nominated for a position in the Supreme Court. Judge Hook was known for having post-approval toward segregation which made the NAACP uneasy about the nomination. When the nomination was officially made, the association organized a protest against the nomination. Due to the efforts of the association's protest, President William Howard Taft withdrew the nomination of Judge Hook.
1913During May, Oswald Garrison Villard paid a visit to President Woodrow Wilson at the White House. He presented a plan for a national race commission which will be conducting studies on the Negros' life in the country. The President Woodrow Wilson was known as a white southerner and wanted segregation within the government's system which still surprised many people of all races. When that became known within the people, Villard with the permission of the NAACP's Board of Directors sent a letter of protest to the president through the White House.
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1914 Villard decided to make changes in his professional life. He retired as a chairman of the NAACP's National Board and became a chairman in the Finance Committee of the association. The Finance Committee had twenty-four branches and three-thousand members. Joel Spingarn took the available position as a chairman that Villard left behind. Mary
the organization. She also traveled to Washington D.C. to discuss the different effects and treatments of segregation, and her observations were spread to the public through the press. The Suffragette Parade of 1914 was an organized protest against the national refusal of granting the right to vote to women. The NAACP was also fighting their own battle for the admissions of the blacks into the parade. Moorfield Storey convinced the bar to let go of their two year olds refusal of admittances to the colored attorneys. In the military, Private Anderson of Honolulu a colored soldier was convicted of charges of burglary, and the conviction caught the NAACP's eye. Villard decided to interfere with help of the Army's Judge Advocate General and won a reversal of the court-martial's five years prison sentence.
1917participated in a case against members of the 24th infantry with charges of rioting in Houston, Texas.
1919 Mary White Ovington became a chairman of the NAACP’s board, and Arthur B.
Spingarn was elected as vice president of the organization. During the spring
of that year, the NAACP published “Thirty Years of Lynching in the United
States, from 1889 to 1918.” The association call for a conference about
anti-lynching which gained a hundred and twenty signatures of supporters. This
conference was held at the Carnegie Hall in May. In Texas, the attorney general
told the president of the NAACP’s Board of Austin to hand over all records to
the court. The organization knew that many people’s lives would be jeopardized
if they followed the court’s order, so NAACP Executive John Shillady went to
Austin to fight against the court’s order. Unfortunately, he was the one that
was really prosecuted in the courthouse. When it was all over for Shillady, he
was ambush by a mob that was led by Judge Dave J. Pickle and was beaten by them
until he was unconscious. The Pink Franklin’s case was the first major legal
case that the NAACP was involved since the 1910, but Franklin was set free from
jail during this year. The charges were about breaking a labor contract,
and a white police officer broke into Franklin’s cabin at 3a.m. to arrest him.
The case finally closed after nine years because Governor Richard I. Manning of
South Carolina decided to give parole to Franklin due to his good behavior in
jail. W.E.B. DuBois summoned the Pan-American Congress. The
Congress’s purpose was to make it possible for African people be able to have a
voice in the government and when that right was abused or taken away from, the
newly formed League of Nations would be obligated to make these violation be
known to the public. Then, the publications were to be presented to the Paris
Peace Conference.
“If we deny full expression to a race, if we restrict its education, stifle its intellectual and aesthetic impulses, we make it impossible to fairly gauge its ability.” |