Founding of the NAACP, 1909

OTD in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded. The brainchild of activists such as Ida B. Wells, William Monroe Trotter, T. Thomas Fortune and W.E.B. DuBois, the NAACP emerged from the more strident Niagara Movement of 1905. Dedicated to advancing the fight for civil rights and confronting segregation and discrimination, the NAACP soon became the dominant interracial organization in the civil rights struggle. Its early leadership included white Americans, such as Mary White Ovington and Moorefield Storey. The organization's charter, which was produced in 1911, provides a roadmap for the organization's mission:

"To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, employment according to their ability, and complete equality before the law."

The NAACP took the lead in the fight against lynching, organized the legal strategy to overturn Plessy V Ferguson, which established the concept of separate but equal in the law. Successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. They also played a leading role alone with other civil rights organization in securing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, among many other achievements.

NAACP Official Website

NAACP | Leading the Fight to End Racial Inequality

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