The History Of The National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People (naacp)
The history of a country should be known whether it may negatively portray them or not, this is to gain a further understanding on how the country got here. Which is why The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, also known as the NAACP is essential for students to learn and understand how the NAACP was able to progress the civil rights movement. The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909 in New York City by both black and white activists including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida Wells, and Mary Church Terrell. The founding ideals of the NAACP is to make sure the political, social, educational, and economic rights are equal to all people and to eliminate discrimination which impacted the way they operated as and organization. It is important that the NAACP is studied in history courses because this will allow students to learn and understand methods to properly express their views, how to persevere through challenges, and using the judicial system to resolve disputes. The NAACP is important in the study because the students learn to identify unjust acts, they learn how to secure their civil rights listed in the United States Constitution, and the importance of organization to fight for change. This is important because in America we must abide by the law of the land and when a law is unjust it is our duty as Americans to fight for change. To do so learning from the past and seeing how changes came to truly appreciate what is given now and to further change society.
Identifying injustice is the first step in fighting against it; the NAACP is a prime example of an organization possessing this skill. Providing this skill for students can help them use it in their everyday lives through having a new social and political lense. One example is the NAACP recognized the injustice of the Scottsboro case, and because of this they decided to give the men on trial a good defense. This act by the NAACP, I believe can be summed up with Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham jail in which he states “injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured”. This quote relates to identifying injustice because it highlights the importance of seeking out injustice before addressing it.
The NAACP has shown many ways to successfully get their viewpoints across to the public and government in an orderly way which diminishes some negative thoughts of African Americans. An example of this is from Silent Protest Parade Centennial “just five days after Martin Luther King, Jr. led the march on Selma, AL – President Lyndon Johnson announced his intention to pass a federal Voting Rights Act to ensure that no federal, state or local government may in any way impede people from registering to vote or voting because of their race or ethnicity”. This shows expressing your views in a proper way change can come while you break barriers. Also, this conveys the message that staying strong with one another can alter others' view of the topic and have an even stronger movement for change. Another quote that demonstrates this is “NAACP wasted no time in composing a retort and soon issued a call for a Silent Protest Parade. ‘You must be in line,’ the Association commanded. . . On July 28, nearly 10,000 black men, women, and children wordlessly paraded down New York’s Fifth Avenue. Silently marching to the beat of a drum, the throngs of protesters clutched picket signs declaring their purpose and demanding justice”. This depicted African Americans as a determined and organized community, which shows sticking together as a whole helps bring power and attention to your effort. Something that also is gained by doing things as a collective is creating a narrative that is true to you and more accurate to what is truly happening. My last example is “In its consistent effort to sway members of Congress, the NAACP has relied upon the normal group techniques: lobbying face-to-face before Congressional committees and individual Congressmen and their staffs, ‘backstopping’ friendly legislators by drafting bills; and building up grassroots support for the group cause”. This shows it takes determination, a vast number of methods, and tactics to maximize your chance of success. Due to the problem of discrimination being so largely interwoven in society, to make a true impact there are several ways change need to be forced most importantly in the government and more specifically Judicial system.
In America, the NAACP has made addressing injustice a crucial role to ensure America’s civil liberties. The U. S. Constitution outlines our right to assemble and free speech. The NAACP advocated for this through organizing protests against discrimination on the basis of race and providing needed defense for unjust cases. One of their most well-known achievements was their part in their legal defense in Brown vs. The Board of Education to end segregation in public schools. They saw an unjust law within society and fought to secure their civil rights by taking the case all the way to the supreme court. The significance of this is that the NAACP and fellow lawyer Thurgood Marshall said that segregated schools violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Another example of the NAACP acting on civil disobedience is when a local secretary of the NAACP refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama. Her name was Rosa Parks and her actions would set the stage for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Because Rosa Parks fought against the injustice of the Montgomery bus system the boycott became a tremendous fight in the efforts of the NAACP to create a more equal America. MLK summarizes this and the reason as to what the NAACP fights for in his letter from Birmingham jail by saying “One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence”. This ties back to the NAACP’s efforts on addressing injustices because King says that America is rooted in the constitution and the fight that the NAACP and everyone else is fighting will bring America to be a more just society.
The NAACP was able to demonstrate perseverance through many challenges and push back from other communities partly of the unfamiliarity with new change. Myrlie Evers-Williams, a chairwoman for the NAACP once said “If I had not persevered over some 30 years, the man I know who killed my husband would still be free. When the jury found him guilty it was because of my perseverance and that of others. You became freer the moment that verdict came in because my husband did not die in vain. He believed in his country, and now I can say that it believed in him. This demonstrates that you should always persevere through challenges and try to turn negative occurrences into motivation to accomplish something.
Another example of the NAACP Going through challenges to make a positive impact come from History. com “ Medgar Evers activism made him the most visible civil rights leader in the state of Mississippi. As a result, he and his family were subjected to numerous threats and violent actions over the years, including a firebombing of their house in May 1963. Evers was shot in the back in the driveway of his home in Jackson. . . He later died. . . The national outrage over Evers’ murder increased support for legislation that would become the Civil rights act of 1964. ” This indicates that you have to go through hard times to reach your final demonstration, and to find the positivity in any situation.
The concluding reason why history courses should learn about the NAACP is how they used to and currently were able to use the judicial system to fight racism interwoven in America. This is shown by the source NAACP where they state litigation has been one of the primary methods used by the NAACP and its units around the country to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and discrimination. The NAACP’s legacy of successfully utilizing the courts as the great equalizers of rights and opportunities continues to the present day. Over the past year, the NAACP – especially through its units – has achieved hard-won victories in state and appellate courts throughout the country that ultimately redound to the benefit of all persons and make this great nation “more perfect”. This supports that there is always room for improvement in society and how you can make it better by using the court system, which offers the opportunity to do so. Also by providing this context it shows that unification in all the different systems that are made to discriminate against African Americans is the biggest way it can be overcome.
A different example is from NAACP Legal History which shows how impactful it is to use the judicial system to create real change in the U. S is “a study commissioned by the NAACP in the 1930s, Nathan Margold found that under segregation, the facilities provided for blacks were always separate, but never equal to those maintained for whites. This, Margold argued, violated the equality aspect of Plessy’s separate but equal principle. Margold proposed a series of lawsuits that would challenge the system. After joining the NAACP, Houston refined Margold’s recommendations, developed a strategy, and implemented a battle plan. Under Houston’s equalization strategy, lawsuits were filed demanding that the facilities provided for black students be made equal. Houston successfully argued several cases using this strategy”. This establishes how passionate the NAACP were to remove inequality by using methods in the court system which shows how intelligent African Americans could be. My last piece of evidence is from the same source NAACP Legal History which is on why it’s important to learn about the naacp “The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on January 7, 1948. N. A. A. C. P. attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston argued on behalf of Sipuel. Only five days after oral argument, the Court delivered a per curiam opinion favoring Sipuel and upholding the Gaines standard. The source From Exclusion to Integratione Court held ‘'The petitioner is entitled to secure legal education afforded by a state institution. To this time, it has been denied her although during the same period many white applicants have been afforded legal education by the State. The State must provide it for her in conformity with the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and provide it as soon as it does for applicants of any other group. '’ In favoring the plaintiff's position, the Supreme Court emphasized the need for state governments to provide African-Americans some educational opportunity”. This testifies to the fact that you can interpret the constitution into your own and challenge the system if you strongly believe it isn’t functioning correctly.
Organization for change makes recognizing injustice and addressing it that much more impactful. The NAACP, throughout their protest, have organized mass alignment to make their voices heard. One example of this is the NAACP’s contribution to the march on Washington. The NAACP was a major factor in organizing the 1963 March on Washington. The next year, the NAACP created the Mississippi Freedom Summer, a project that attracted volunteers for voter registration and free education. Throughout the NAACP’s fight for justice, an organization has been a necessary part to have your voice heard. Present day we can see organization as important as it was back then, for example, Barack Obama has stated this quote in his speech at the NAACP “they also knew that here, in America, change would have to come from the people. It would come from people protesting lynching, rallying against violence, and walking instead of taking the bus. It would come from men and women – of every age and faith, race and region – taking Greyhounds on Freedom Rides; taking seats at Greensboro lunch counters; and registering voters in rural Mississippi”. In the quote, Obama was talking about the different acts of civil disobedience that took place in America, and how organization played a role in amplifying these acts.
When the NAACP was first founded their mission was fighting for the equal rights of African Americans. To achieve this the NAACP had ambition for recognizing injustice, addressing injustice, and for the unity of people to fight for collective change. The NAACP has fought for justice and equality to be the standard norm among all Americans. Today teaching the NAACP is important in our schools because you must educate people of their constitutional rights in order for them to be conscious about when those rights are wrongfully taken, and how addressing it with people who share your idea for collective change can make a difference. The NAACP has impacted society by trying to bring equality to all races, which we have all benefited from in the present and also giving sparks to future generations to do the same. The organization strives for equality is shown through the vast methods they used to bring equality, their ability to bring positivity from the negative occurrences in life, and using intelligent and respectful ways to implement equality in the law. Through the NAACP countless changes have occured in all communities, but if we don’t learn from the past we won’t be able to truly appreciate and use our resources to fullest.
