National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP (pronounced N-double-A-C-P) is a civil rights organization in the United States, created for the advancement of black people by means of following judicial policies.

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 Bois of the situation, and a coalition began to form.

In 1905, a group of thirty-two prominent African-American leaders met to discuss the challenges facing African Americans and possible strategies and solutions.  They were particularly concerned by the Southern states' disenfranchisement of blacks starting with Mississippi's passage of a new constitution in 1890.  Through 1908, Southern legislatures, dominated by white Southern Democrats, ratified new constitutions and laws creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules.  In practice, this and the Lily-white movement caused the exclusion of most blacks and many poor whites from the political system in southern states.  Black voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result of such legislation.  Men who had been voting for thirty years in the South were told they did not "qualify" to register.  White-dominated legislatures also passed segregation and Jim Crow laws.

Because hotels in the US were segregated, the men convened in Canada at the Erie Beach Hotel on the Canadian side of the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Ontario.  As a result, the group came to be known as the Niagara Movement.  A year later, three non-African-Americans joined the group: journalist William English Walling, a wealthy socialist; and social workers Mary White Ovington and Henry Moskowitz.  Moskowitz, who was Jewish, was then also Associate Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.  They met in 1906 at Storer College, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and in 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts.

The fledgling group struggled for a time with limited resources and internal conflict and disbanded in 1910. Seven of the members of the Niagara Movement joined the Board of Directors of the NAACP, founded in 1909.  Although both organizations shared membership and overlapped for a time, the Niagara Movement was a separate organization.  Historically, it is considered to have had a more radical platform than the NAACP.  The Niagara Movement was formed exclusively by African Americans.  Four European Americans were among the founders of the NAACP, they included Mary White Ovington, Henry Moskowitz, William English Walling and Oswald Garrison Villard.

 References 

Category:Civil rights organizations based in the United States
Category:1909 establishments in the United States
Category:Organizations based in Maryland