By 1919, the NAACP had some 90,000 members and more than 300 branches. The NAACP played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. One of the organization’s key victories was the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools.
In 1916, chairman Joel Spingarn invited James Weldon Johnson to serve as field secretary. Johnson was a former U. S. consul to Venezuela and a noted African-American scholar and columnist. Within four years, Johnson was instrumental in increasing the NAACP's membership from 9,000 to almost 90,000.
The NAACP's most famous case was Brown v. Board of Education, which ended government-enforced racial segregation in the public school system.
The NAACP’s founding members included white progressives Mary White Ovington, Henry Moskowitz, William English Walling and Oswald Garrison Villard, along with such African Americans as W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells-Barnett, Archibald Grimke and Mary Church Terrell.
Thurgood MarshallThurgood Marshall was a civil rights lawyer who used the courts to fight Jim Crow and dismantle segregation in the U.S. Marshall was a towering figure who became the nation's first Black United States Supreme Court Justice. He is best known for arguing the historic 1954 Brown v.
The first general counsel of NAACP, Charles Hamilton Houston exposed the hollowness of the "separate but equal" doctrine and paved the way for the Supreme Court ruling outlawing school segregation.
From 1938 to 1950, Marshall served as chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). From 1940 to 1961, he was director and chief counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Thurgood Marshall1939: Thurgood Marshall Named Special Counsel for NAACP Marshall succeeded his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston. Significance: Thurgood Marshall would eventually be lead counsel in the Brown v. Board of Education case.
Charles Hamilton Houston Born in 1895, Charles Houston was the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, dean of Howard University Law School, chief counsel to the NAACP, and the first African-American lawyer to win a case before the Supreme Court.
Macon Bolling AllenMacon Bolling AllenResting placeCharleston, South CarolinaOther namesAllen Macon BollingOccupationLawyer, judgeKnown forFirst African-American lawyer and Justice of the Peace4 more rows
The 51-year-old Crump has been at the center of virtually every racial firestorm in the last eight years. He is the nation's most famous civil rights attorney — you've probably seen him even if you don't know his name.
Civil Rights Era The NAACP played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. One of the organization's key victories was the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed segregation in public schools.
Thurgood Marshall's Family Marshall was born to Norma A. Marshall and William Canfield on July 2, 1908. His parents were mulatottes, which are people classified as being at least half white.
Clarence ThomasMarshall retired during the administration of President George H. W. Bush in 1991, and was succeeded by Clarence Thomas.
With her appointment to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on January 25, 1966, Constance Baker Motley (1921–2005; Columbia Law School 1946, 2003) became the first African American woman appointed to the federal judiciary. She was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
Chief Justice Earl WarrenSeparate but equal educational facilities for racial minorities is inherently unequal, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court.
The Race Riot of 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, the state capital and Abraham Lincoln's hometown, was a catalyst showing the urgent need for an effective civil rights organization in the U.S. In the decades around the turn of the century, the rate of lynchings of blacks, particularly men, was at an all-time high. Mary White Ovington, journalist William English Walling and Henry Moskowitz met in N…
The NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore, with additional regional offices in New York, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Colorado and California. Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members.
In the U.S., the NAACP is administered by a 64-member board led by a chairperson. The board el…
The Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, New York, featured many American innovations and achievements, but also included a disparaging caricature of slave life in the South as well as a depiction of life in Africa, called "Old Plantation" and "Darkest Africa", respectively. A local African-American woman, Mary Talbert of Ohio, was appalled by the exhibit, as a similar one in Paris highlighted black achievements. She informed W. E. B. Du Bois of the situation, and a coalition be…
The organization's national initiatives, political lobbying, and publicity efforts were handled by the headquarters staff in New York and Washington, D.C. Court strategies were developed by the legal team based for many years at Howard University.
NAACP local branches have also been important. When, in its early years, the national office launched campaigns against The Birth of a Nation, it was the local branches that carried out the …