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National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
65th ANNUAL CONVENTION
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA - JULY 1 - JULY 5, 1974

[[image: circular logo with words: NAACP . FOUNDED - 1909 . OVER 65 YEARS]]

Highlights of NAACP Involvement: 1909-1973

1909 - A year after white residents sought violently to chase Negroes from Springfield, Ill., the home of Abraham Lincoln, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is born on the 100th Anniversary of the Great Emancipator's birth. The initial meeting is held in New York City, at Cooper Union, and is attended by a group of prominent black and white citizens who sign the original charter.

1910 - W.E.B. Du Bois starts publishing [[italic]]The Crisis[[/italic]] as the official publication of the NAACP. The first issue appears in November with a press run of 1,000 copies. Du Bois remained editor for nearly a quarter of a century, and the magazine became the most prestigious, influential and quoted black periodical in American history. (In 1974, subscribers number 100,000.)
- Moorfield Storey becomes president of the Association.

1914 - Joel E. Spingarn institutes the Spingarn Medal to be awarded annually for the highest achievement of an American Negro. The Award was to become the most important honor accorded by a Negro organization.

1915 - The U.S. Supreme Court in [[italic]]Guinn v. United States[[/italic]] declares the "grandfather clause" in the Oklahoma constitution unconstitutional. That clause gave the vote to persons who had done military service in wartime, or to those who had voted before 1867 and to their descendants, thus excluding Negroes from the right to vote. NAACP filed an [[italic]]amicus curiae[[/italic]] brief and joined in the argument before the Court. It was the only organization thus represented.
- The first Spingarn Medal is presented to Professor Ernest E. Just, head of the department of physiology, Howard University Medical School, for research in biology.

1916 - Spingarn Award presented to Major Charles Young, U.S. Army, for services in Organizing the Liberian constabulary and developing roads in the Republic of Liberia.
- James Weldon Johnson joins NAACP staff as Field Secretary.

1917 - Neary 10,000 individuals participate in the "Silent Protest Parade" for which the NAACP deserves considerable credit. The parade is in protest of lynching and mob violence. 
- Because Negroes were not reaching officer level in the military forces, Joel Spingarn successfully agitates with the War Department for the establishment of an officers training camp for Negroes.
- Harry T. Burleigh receives the Spingarn Medal for excellence in the field of creative music.

[[images - 5 photos of a man speaking]]