• On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and 100 years later, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded on the anniversary of his birth.
• The spark for the organization of the NAACP was a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, on August 14 and 15, 1908.
• William English Walling, Mary White Ovington, and Henry Moskowitz met in New York City in January 1909 to create a new civil rights organization.
• The group noted that Black Americans had lost their right to vote and were segregated from white Americans in schools, railroad cars, and public gatherings.
• W. E. B. Du Bois, a founding member of the Niagara Movement, became the NAACP’s director of publicity and research and edited the organization’s flagship journal *The Crisis*.
• The NAACP challenged racial inequality by calling popular attention to racial atrocities and demanding that officials treat people equally before the law.
• In 1946, NAACP leader Walter Francis White brought the story of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard, blinded by a police officers after talking back to a bus driver, to President Harry S. Truman.
Published February 13, 2023
Visit Letters from an American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post February 12, 2023
