who was the head lawyer for the naacp?

by Ms. Linnea Waelchi 5 min read

Thurgood Marshall

Who is the president of the NAACP?

Learn more about NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, an American lawyer, humanitarian, and veteran activist.

When did Thurgood Marshall establish the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund?

Mar 21, 1981 · Pioneering civil-rights attorney Thurgood Marshall, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), successfully argued the case before the court. Marshall, who founded the LDF in...

What was the initial goal of the NAACP?

President & CEO Derrick Johnson. The accomplished activists, professionals, and philanthropists who lead NAACP are committed to ending race-based discrimination. Through their various roles and areas of expertise, they bolster the work and drive the fight for civil rights and social justice. Meet the Senior Staff.

What does it mean to be a member of the NAACP?

Apr 14, 2022 · GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — On Sunday, the NAACP of Greater Grand Rapids President Cle Jackson stood at the podium at Renaissance Church, standing near national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, and...

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Who was the leader of the NAACP?

The larger conference resulted in a more diverse organization, where the leadership was predominantly white. Moorfield Storey , a white attorney from a Boston abolitionist family, served as the president of the NAACP from its founding to 1915.

Who is the NAACP?

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.

What did the NAACP do in Brown?

The NAACP continued to use the Supreme Court's decision in Brown to press for desegregation of schools and public facilities throughout the country. Daisy Bates, president of its Arkansas state chapter, spearheaded the campaign by the Little Rock Nine to integrate the public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.

What movie did the NAACP protest against?

The following year, the NAACP organized a nationwide protest, with marches in numerous cities, against D. W. Griffith 's silent movie The Birth of a Nation, a film that glamorized the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, several cities refused to allow the film to open.

What did Wells Barnett call for?

Wells-Barnett addressed the conference on the history of lynching in the United States and called for action to publicize and prosecute such crimes. The members chose the new organization's name to be the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and elected its first officers:

How many members are there in the NAACP?

The environmental justice group at NAACP has 11 full-time staff members. In April 2019, the NAACP published a report outlining the tactics used by the fossil fuel industry. The report claims that "Fossil fuel companies target the NAACP for manipulation and co-optation." The NAACP has been concerned about the influence of utilities which have contributed massive amounts of money to NAACP chapters in return for chapter support of non-environmentally friendly goals of utilities. In response, the NAACP has been working with its chapters to encourage them to support environmentally sound policies.

How many youth groups are there in the NAACP?

Youth sections of the NAACP were established in 1936; there are now more than 600 groups with a total of more than 30,000 individuals in this category. The NAACP Youth & College Division is a branch of the NAACP in which youth are actively involved. The Youth Council is composed of hundreds of state, county, high school and college operations where youth (and college students) volunteer to share their opinions with their peers and address local and national issues. Sometimes volunteer work expands to a more international scale.

Why was the NAACP criticized?

At the same time, NAACP members were subject to harassment and violence.

What was the NAACP's role in the Civil Rights Movement?

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.

What movie did the NAACP boycott?

Also in 1915, the NAACP called for a boycott of Birth of a Nation, a movie that portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in a positive light and perpetrated racist stereotypes of Black people. The NAACP’s campaign was largely unsuccessful, but it helped raise the new group’s public profile.

Why did the NAACP march in 1917?

In 1917, some 10,000 people in New York City participated in an NAACP-organized silent march to protest lynchings and other violence against Black people. The march was one of the first mass demonstrations in America against racial violence.

How many members does the NAACP have in 2021?

By 2021, the NAACP had more than 2,200 branches and more than half a million members worldwide.

How many branches does the NAACP have?

During the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s, the group won major legal victories, and today the NAACP has more than 2,200 branches and some half a million members worldwide.

What issues did the NAACP face?

Today, the NAACP is focused on such issues as inequality in jobs, education, health care and the criminal justice system, as well as protecting voting rights.

What was the NAACP's goal in 1936?

In 1936, Marshall became the NAACP’s chief legal counsel. The NAACP’s initial goal was to funnel equal resources to black schools. Marshall successfully challenged the board to only litigate cases that would address the heart of segregation.

Who was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court?

Marshall founded LDF in 1940 and served as its first Director-Counsel. He was the architect of the legal strategy that ended the country’s official policy of segregation and was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court. He served as Associate Justice from 1967-1991 after being nominated by President Johnson.

What did Marshall do to ensure that America would forever remain a divided society?

To fail to do so is to ensure that America will forever remain a divided society.”. In particular, Marshall fervently dissented in cases in which the Supreme Court upheld death sentences; he wrote over 150 opinions dissenting from cases in which the Court refused to hear death penalty appeals.

What did Marshall do after he graduated?

Immediately after graduation, Marshall opened a law office in Baltimore , and in the early 1930s, he represented the local NAACP chapter in a successful lawsuit that challenged the University of Maryland Law School over its segregation policy. In addition, he successfully brought lawsuits that integrated other state universities.

What did Marshall say about segregation?

Board of Education, which he argued before the Supreme Court in 1952 and 1953, finally overturning “separate but equal” and acknowledging that segrega tion greatly diminished students’ self-esteem.

What did President Johnson say about Marshall's nomination?

On the appointment, President Johnson later said that Marshall’s nomination was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man and the right place.”.

Who said we should be social engineers rather than lawyers?

In an interview published in 1992 in the American Bar Association Journal, Marshall wrote that “Charlie Houston insisted that we be social engineers rather than lawyers,” a mantra that he upheld and personified.

Who was the leader of the NAACP in 1930?

White presided over the NAACP's most productive period of legal advocacy. In 1930 the association commissioned the Margold Report, which became the basis for the successful reversal of the separate-but-equal doctrine that had governed public facilities since Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

What is the NAACP?

The NAACP works to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes. The national office was established in New York City in 1910 as well as a board of directors and president, Moorfield Storey, a white constitutional lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association.

What is the NAACP movement?

While much of NAACP history is chronicled in books, articles, pamphlets, and magazines, the true movement lies in the faces of the multiracial, multigenerational army of ordinary people who united to awaken the consciousness of a people and a nation.

What is the NAACP's real story?

The real story of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization lies in the hearts and minds of all those who refused to stand idly while race prejudice tarnished our nation. From bold investigations of mob brutality and protests of mass murders to testimony before congressional committees on the vicious tactics used to bar African Americans from the ballot box, it was the talent and tenacity of NAACP members that saved lives and laid the foundation upon which our fight for racial justice and equity is built.

What was the NAACP's mission?

Accordingly, the NAACP's mission is to ensure the political, educational, equality of minority group citizens of States and eliminate race prejudice. The NAACP works to remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes.

What was the final tipping point for the NAACP?

In 1908, a deadly race riot rocked the city of Springfield, eruptions of anti-black violence – particularly lynching – were horrifically commonplace, but the Springfield riot was the final tipping point that led to the creation of the NAACP. Appalled at this rampant violence, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington ...

Which group supported the Dyer Bill?

After early worries about its constitutionality, the NAACP strongly supported the federal Dyer Bill, which would have punished those who participated in or failed to prosecute lynch mobs. Though the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill, a Senate filibuster defeated it for good in 1922.

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Overview

History

The Race Riot of 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, the state capital and President 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 Moskow…

Organization

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…

Predecessor: The Niagara Movement

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 Boisof the situation, and a coalition be…

Local branch impact

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 …

Current activities

Youth sections of the NAACP were established in 1936; there are now more than 600 groups with a total of more than 30,000 individuals in this category. The NAACP Youth & College Division is a branch of the NAACP in which youth are actively involved. The Youth Council is composed of hundreds of state, county, high school and college operations where youth (and college students…

Awards

• NAACP Image Awards – honoring African-American achievements in film, television, music, and literature
• NAACP Theatre Awards – honoring African-American achievements in theatre productions
• Spingarn Medal – honoring general African-American achievements

See also

• Althea T. L. Simmons
• Civil rights movement (1896–1954)
• Chicago Better Housing Association
• The Crisis, official magazine

Early life and education

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Marshall was born on July 2, 1908 in Baltimore, Maryland to William Marshall, railroad porter, who later worked on the staff of Gibson Island Club, a white-only country club and Norma Williams, a school teacher. One of his great-grandfathers had been taken as a slave from the Congo to Maryland where he was eventually fr…
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Early career

  • Immediately after graduation, Marshall opened a law office in Baltimore and in the early 1930s, he represented the local NAACP chapter in a successful lawsuit that challenged the University of Maryland Law School over its segregation policy. In addition, he successfully brought lawsuits that integrated other state universities. In 1936, Marshall became the NAACPs chief legal couns…
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Significance

  • After founding the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1940, Marshall became the key strategist in the effort to end racial segregation, in particular meticulously challenging Plessy v. Ferguson , the Court-sanctioned legal doctrine that called for separate but equal structures for white and blacks. Marshall won a series of court decisions that gradually struck down that doctrine, ultimately lea…
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Leadership

  • In 1957 LDF, led by Marshall, became an entirely separate entity from the NAACP with its own leadership and board of directors and has remained a separate organization to this day.
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Later career

  • In 1961, President Kennedy nominated Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in which he wrote 112 opinions, none of which was overturned on appeal. Four years later, he was appointed by President Johnson to be solicitor general and in 1967 President Johnson nominated him to the Supreme Court to which he commented: I have a lifetime appointment and I intend to …
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Criticisms

  • As a Supreme Court Justice, he became increasingly dismayed and disappointed as the courts majority retreated from remedies he felt were necessary to address remnants of Jim Crow. In his Bakke dissent, he wrote: In light of the sorry history of discrimination and its devastating impact on the lives of Negroes, bringing the Negro into the mainstream of American life should be a sta…
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Legacy

  • In particular, Marshall fervently dissented in cases in which the Supreme Court upheld death sentences; he wrote over 150 opinions dissenting from cases in which the Court refused to hear death penalty appeals. Among Marshalls salient majority opinions for the Supreme Court were: Amalgamated Food Employees Union v. Logan Valley Plaza, in 1968, which determined that a m…
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