NAACP and African American civil rights

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  • Created by: Alasdair
  • Created on: 02-06-17 14:49
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  • The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
    • First major organisation
    • Early 20th Century
    • Not predominantly led by AAs
    • Originated from concerns about race riots and lynchings expressed in Niagra Movement
    • Included:
      • W. E. B. Du Bois
        • Only senior black committee member
      • Ida Wells
      • Liberal white social reformers and campaigners
    • Founded in 1909, name chosen in 1910
    • Aims
      • Suffragette rights
      • Equal justice
      • Better education
      • Equality before law
      • Employment opportunities according to ability
    • Organisation more for African Americans than run by them and initially dominated with Jewish white liberals
    • Main thrust of its campaigns were legal
      • Target to challenge Jim Crow laws of South
        • Run contrary to constitutional amendments
      • Campaigned in relatively restrained way against President Wilson's policy of segregating federal employment
      • In favour of allowing AAs to serve as officers in armed forces
    • Established:
      • 50 local branches
      • A journal
      • Set up marches in protest against:
        • film: The Birth of a Nation
        • Race riots in St Louis in 1917
    • Did not recruit mass following:
      • Only had 6000 members by 1915
    • Used middle-class membership more for legal challenges against voting restrictions in South
    • Effectively blocked moves to make segregation of AAs into distinct districts illegal in 1917
    • 1920s
      • A more dynamic recruitment policy led to an increase in membership in 1920s
        • Law remained its main tactic
      • Defended AAs sentenced to death in Arkansas after rioting, who claimed they had been tortured
      • Publicised evils of lynching
    • NAACP's achievements were relatively modest
      • Achieved Supreme Court ruling in 1944 that it was illegal to deny AAs right to vote in primary elections
      • Its long and steady legal campaigns increased role and reputation of black lawyer Thurgood Marshall
      • There was steady attack on segregation, which culminated in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling in 1954
        • Actual enforcement of policy was beyond resources of NAACP
    • Local activists spearheaded one of most significant developments of post-war period in 1955, when Rosa Parks challenged segregated bus regulations in Montgomery, Alabama
      • Her arrest was quickly followed by issue of 52,000 leaflets calling for bus boycott
      • Changed nature of NAACP's work and introduced idea of using organisation and economic pressure and also exploiting publicity of celebrated case
      • However, when NAACP was barred from Alabama all it could do was challenge decision in courts and leave state until 1958
        • Opened way for more dynamic local organisations using mass campaigning
          • Thus, 1955 bus boycott was high points but also indication of limitations of NAACP
    • It was instrumental in campaign in 1959 to integrate schools in Little Rock
    • Most famous incidents of 1950s were work of NAACP
      • But after its participation in March on Washington in 1963, which it did much to organise, its days of greatness seemed to be over

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