Naacp

Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in the states included in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members.
The NAACP is run nationally by a 64-member board led by a chair.

The board elects one person as the President and chief executive officer for the organization; Benjamin Jealous is its most recent (and youngest) President, selected to replace Bruce K. Civil Rights Movement activist and former Georgia state representative Julian Bond remains as chairman.
Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action.

Local chapters are supported by the Branch and Field Services department and the Youth and College department. The Legal Department focuses on court cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government, or education.

The Washington, D.C., bureau is responsible for lobbying the U.S. government, and the Education Department works to improve public education at the local, state and federal levels.

The goal of the Health Division is to advance health care for minorities through public policy initiatives and education.
As of 2007, the NAACP had approximately 400,000 paying and non-paying members.
History
In 1905, a group of 32 prominent, outspoken African Americans met to discuss the challenges facing "people of color" - a term that was used to describe people who were not white) - and possible strategies and solutions. Among the issues they were concerned about was the disfranchisement of blacks in the South starting in 1890 to 1908, when Southern legislatures ratified new constitutions creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules.Voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result. were segregated, the men convened under the leadership of Harvard scholar W.

Walling, social worker Mary White Ovington, and Jewish social worker Henry Moskowitz, then Associate Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
The fledgling group struggled for a time with limited resources and decided to broaden its membership to increase its scope and effectiveness. This event is often cited as the catalyst for the formation of the NAACP.
The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, by a diverse group composed of W.

Du Bois played a key role in organizing the event and presided over the proceedings. The association's charter delineated its mission:
To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.
The conference resulted in a more influential and diverse organization, where the leadership was predominantly white and heavily Jewish American.

It did not elect a black president until 1975, although executive directors had been African American. The Jewish community contributed greatly to the NAACP's founding and continued financing.

Jewish historian Howard Sachar writes in his book A History of Jews in America of how, "In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise." Early Jewish-American co-founders included Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Storey consistently and aggressively championed civil rights, not only for blacks but also for Native Americans and immigrants (he opposed immigration restrictions).
Fighting Jim Crow and disfranchisement


An African American drinks out of a segregated water cooler designated for "colored" patrons in 1939 at a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City.

In its early years, the NAACP concentrated on using the courts to overturn the Jim Crow statutes that legalized racial segregation.As a result, several cities refused to allow the film to open.
The NAACP began to lead lawsuits targeting disfranchisement and racial segregation early in its history. The Court's opinion reflected the jurisprudence of property rights and freedom of contract as embodied in the earlier precedent it established in Lochner v.

More than 200 black tenant farmers were killed by roving white vigilantes and federal troops after a deputy sheriff's attack on a union meeting of sharecroppers left one white man dead. White investigated eight race riots and 41 lynchings for the NAACP and directed its study Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States.
The NAACP also spent more than a decade seeking federal legislation against lynching, but Southern white Democrats voted as a block against it or used the filibuster in the Senate to block passage.

Because of disfranchisement, there were no black representatives from the South in Congress and the region had essentially a one-party system of Democrats. The NAACP regularly displayed a black flag stating "A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" from the window of its offices in New York to mark each lynching.
In alliance with the American Federation of Labor, the NAACP led the successful fight to prevent the nomination of John Johnston Parker to the Supreme Court, based on his support for denying the vote to blacks and his anti-labor rulings.

The NAACP lost most of the internecine battles with the Communist Party and International Labor Defense over the control of those cases and the strategy to be pursued in that case.
The organization also brought litigation to challenge the "white primary" system in the South. Since southern states were one-party states, the primaries were the only competitive contests.

Although states had to retract legislation related to the white primaries, the legislatures soon came up with new methods to limit the franchise for blacks.
Desegregation


Locals viewing the bomb-damaged home of Arthur Shores, NAACP attorney, Birmingham, Alabama, on 5 September 1963. The bomb exploded on 4 September, the previous day, injuring Shores' wife.

With the rise of private corporate litigators like the NAACP to bear the expense, civil suits became the pattern in modern civil rights litigation.Board of Education that held state-sponsored segregation of elementary schools was unconstitutional. Bolstered by that victory, the NAACP pushed for full desegregation throughout the South.

These newer groups relied on direct action and mass mobilization to advance the rights of African Americans, rather than litigation and legislation. and other civil rights leaders over questions of strategy and leadership within the movement.
The NAACP continued to use the Supreme Court's decision in Brown to press for desegregation of schools and public facilities throughout the country.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963. Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress before he was assassinated.
President Lyndon B.

The dismissal of two leading officials further added to the picture of an organization in deep crisis.
In 1993 the NAACP's Board of Directors narrowly selected Reverend Benjamin Chavis over Reverend Jesse Jackson to fill the position of Executive Director. They accused him of using NAACP funds for an out-of-court settlement in a sexual harassment lawsuit. Following the dismissal of Chavis, Myrlie Evers-Williams narrowly defeated NAACP chairperson William Gibson for president in 1995, after Gibson was accused of overspending and mismanagement of the organization's funds.
In 1996 Congressman Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic Congressman from Maryland and former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, was named the organization's president.

Three years later strained finances forced the organization to drastically cut its staff, from 250 in 1992 to just fifty.
In the second half of the 1990s, the organization restored its finances, permitting the NAACP National Voter Fund to launch a major get-out-the-vote offensive in the 2000 U.S. We are proud of our long-standing relationship with the Jewish community and I personally will not tolerate statements that run counter to the history and beliefs of the NAACP in that regard."
Alcorn, who had been suspended three times in the previous five years for misconduct, subsequently resigned from the NAACP and started his own organization called the Coalition for the Advancement of Civil Rights.For this reason I gladly offer my resignation and my membership to the NAACP because I cannot work under these constraints."
Alcorn's remarks were also condemned by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Jewish groups and George W. You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me." Bush also mentioned his admiration for some members of the NAACP and said he would seek to work with them "in other ways."
On July 20, 2006, after having declined the civil rights group's invitations for five years, Bush addressed the NAACP national convention.

Bush as well as other political figures. In general, the US Internal Revenue Code prohibits organizations granted tax-exempt status from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office." The NAACP denounced the investigation as retaliation for its success in increasing the number of African Americans who vote. In August 2006, the IRS investigation concluded with the agency's finding "that the remarks did not violate the group's tax-exempt status."
NAACP and Youth
This aspect of the NAACP came into existence in 1936 and now is made of over 600 groups and totaling over 30,000 individuals. The Youth Council is composed of hundreds of state,county,high school and college operations in which youth (and college students) volunteer to share their voices or opinions with their fellow mankind and address issues that are both local and national.

Winners at the national competition receive national recognition along with cash awards and various prizes.
Criticism
The non-profit rating organization Charity Navigator lists the NAACP as #7 on their list of "10 Highly Paid CEOs at Low-Rated Charities". Charity Navigator rates the NAACP's finances at one out of four stars, in part because only 52.8% of the NAACP expenditures go towards programs, with the rest going towards administration and fund raising.
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