By Micha Green
AFRO D.C. Editor
mgreen@afro.com
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909, and it is still working to combat challenges facing the Black community- particularly with the impending 2020 general election.
Like many organizations, there were a lot of instances that prompted the founding of the NAACP.. Four years before the NAACP was established, sociologist, scholar, writer, historian William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois was instrumental in gathering like-minded activists on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for what became known as the Niagara Movement. The Niagara Movement created a list of demands, which included an end to segregation, a fight for justice in the courts and a push for economic and educational equity. Sound familiar?
The NAACP was founded in 1909 and has been working for 111 years towards progress and equity for Black people. (Courtesy Photo, Arizona NAACP)
“Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States,” Du Bois famously said in his speech during the Niagara Movement meeting in 1905.
While the Niagara Movement began garnering attention, without the help of White allies, many of their demands had little influence towards legislative changes or the views of the general public. As is the case with issues of oppression in 2020, most people aren’t “woke” until a major incident occurs and change doesn’t become tangible until those who look like the oppressor are just as outraged as those being oppressed. That happened in 1909 as well, when White allies were called to action- in part because of the race riots of 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, when a mob committed major racial violence against Black people from August 14-16. In 1909, White progressives including Mary White Ovington, Jane Addams and Oswald Garrison Villard, the grandson of famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, formed the NAACP. Although White people formed the organization, they adapted many of the demands and ideals of the Niagara Movement and hired Du Bois as director of publicity and research, and editor of their publication, The Crisis. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was also a notable African-American founding member of the organization.
Since its inception, the NAACP has made the Black vote its major focus. In 1910, Oklahoma passed the “grandfather clause,” a constitutional amendment allowing those whose grandfathers were eligible to vote in 1866 to register to vote without passing a literacy test- inherently excluding Black voters whose forefathers had not been permitted to vote at that time. However, the NAACP challenged that law claiming that it to be unconstitutional and won in the Supreme Court in 1915.
W.E.B. Du Bois, former director of publicity and research for the NAACP and editor of their newspaper, {The Crisis}, sitting in the publication’s office. (Courtesy Photo, New York Public Library)
While the organization took some heat for working through the legal system to achieve their goals of justice, during the Civil Rights Movement, the NAACP was key in the fight for the Black vote. The organization helped organize the March on Washington in 1963 and was helpful during the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964, which was a campaign focused on registering Black Mississippians to vote. In addition, the NAACP was instrumental in the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which put an end to legal segregation, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited racial discrimination surrounding registering to vote and exercising one’s civic duty.
Fifty-five years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, voter suppression is very much alive- particularly after amendments to the Voting Rights Act in 2013. With the impending 2020 election, the NAACP is still focused on the Black Vote. On the NAACP’s website there is a petition called, “The Black Vote is Not For Sale.”
“While some attempt to silence our vote with ridiculous voter ID laws, others distract by trying to purchase our votes,” the NAACP wrote. According to the NAACP’s claims, Trump allies handed out envelopes filled with hundreds of dollars at a rally in Cleveland. “This tactic is manipulative, unconscionable, and a spit in the face of our democracy,” the organization added.
“The NAACP will not stand for it, and we need your support in making one thing loud and clear: The Black vote has never, and will never be for sale,” the website reads, before asking viewers to sign the petition and support the cause.
For more information on the NAACP and their campaign “The Black Vote is Not For Sale,” visit https://www.naacp.org/black-vote-not-sale/.
