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NAACP FOUNDED 1909 OVER 65 YEARS

The 67th Anniversary Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

June 28 - July 2, 1976

Theme: NAACP Soul of '76

EVERETT R. COOK CONVENTION CENTER
Memphis, Tenn.

HIGHLIGHTS OF NAACP HISTORY

1909

In January, Dr. Henry Moskowitz, a Socialist and social worker among New York immigrants; Miss Mary White Ovington, a social worker and descendent of abolitionsists; William English Walling, a wealthy Southerner, a Socialist and a writer whose article in the Springfield, Illinois, periodical The Independent, on the 1908 riots aroused widespread sympathy over the treatment of Negroes, met in Walling's apartment to discuss the idea of creating a national, bi-racial organization to help right social injustices. Also comprising this nucleus were Charles Edward Russell, a close friend of Walling's, and Oswald Garrison Villard, publisher of the liberal New York Evening Post. It was agreed at the meeting that a public campaign should be opened on Lincoln's birthday to obtain the support of a much larger group of citizens.

This initial group was made bi-racial by the inclusion of Bishop Alexander Walters of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the rev. William Henry Brooks, minister of St. Mark's Methodist Episcopal Church of New York. Augmenting this group were other such Negro leaders as W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells Barnett, W. L. Bulkley, the Rev. Francis J. Grimke and Mary Church Terrell, all of whom signed the Lincoln Day Call.

In a letter of encouragement to the conferees, William Lloyd Garrison, son of the Boston abolitionist, expressed the hope "that the conference will utter no uncertain sound on any point affecting the vital subject. No part of it is too delicate for plain speech. The republican experiment is at stake, every tolerated wrong to the Negro reacting with double force upon white citizens guilty of faithlessness to their brothers. The rampant antipathy to the Oriental races is part and parcel of the domestic question. Safety lies in an absolute refusal to differentiate the rights of human beings."

On Feburary 12, over the signatures of 60 persons, the "Call" was issued for a meeting on the concept of creating an organization that would be an aggressive watchdog of Negro liberties. This date marked the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

-On May 31 and June 1, the National Negro Conference was held in the Charity Organization Hall in New York City. The theme was based on efforts to refute pre-Civil War beliefs that the Negro was physically and mentally inferior. A Committee of Forty on Permanent Organization was chosen to prepare for the incorporation of a National Committee for the Advancement of the Negro Race.

Notably participating in this conference was Dr. Du Bois, a signer of the "Call," who had organized the Niagara Movement in 1905 in an attempt to stem the curtailment of political and civil rights of Negroes.

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