The Mysteries of History (February 12 Edition)
NAACP Founded
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, 1905
1909 — NAACP Founded
public domain image from wikimedia commons (Thurgood Marshall on the far right)
The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), which is the largest and oldest civil rights group still active in the United States, was founded on this day in 1909.
The formation of the NAACP was prompted partly by an increase in radical racism, including lynchings, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Prominent members of the NAACP have included W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963, who wrote, among other things, The Souls of Black Folk); Medgar Evers (1925-1963), written of here; and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), who had successfully argued the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 before the Supreme Court (which ruled that racial segregation in schools was illegal), and who helped organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave this impassioned I Have a Dream speech.
Questions: Were you aware of the NCAAP and its history? Do you know what the NCAAP is involved in today? Do you know anyone who belongs to the NCAPP? What did the NCAAP mean by “Mississippi-ism”? (see photo above)
