February 2024

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U.S. Census Bureau History: 1909 Founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded 115 years
ago, in New York City, NY, on February 12, 1909.

Photo courtesy of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded 115 years ago this month on February 12, 1909. Established by a diverse group of civil rights activists, legal experts, suffragists, labor reformers and others, the organization sought to counter the increasing violence and racism Blacks were facing throughout the United States. Today, the NAACP remains one of the nation's most influential advocates for equality, political rights, and social inclusion for all people of color.

Soon after the American Civil War ended in 1865, expectations that the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing equal protection of the laws and the right for all men to vote led many African Americans to be quite hopeful for the future. Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first African American in the U.S. Congress when he took his Senate seat representing Mississippi on February 25, 1870. Joseph Hayne Rainey—a former slave from South Carolina—followed Revels to Washington, becoming the first African American in the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1870. Within 3 months of Rainey's arrival, he was joined in the House by five more African American politicians—Jefferson F. Long (GA), Robert C. De Large (SC), Robert B. Elliot (SC), Benjamin S. Turner (SC), and Josiah T. Walls (FL).

Despite these political advances, African Americans faced organized opposition and violent resistance to their progress. Just as African Americans began voting and holding political office, Southern states passed laws restricting African Americans and other non-Whites from moving freely, dining, working, voting, owning property, educating their children, and even entering buildings using the same entrance as Whites. Known as "Jim Crow" laws, these regulations and unwritten social customs effectively disenfranchised African Americans, restricted economic opportunity, and segregated society by skin color. Police and vigilante groups enforced Jim Crow laws and customs with the threat of financial ruin, imprisonment, and violence. On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court formally protected many of these segregation laws when its ruling in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson said that supposedly "separate but equal" accommodations in education, transportation, business, etc., were constitutional. The ruling empowered many Jim Crow proponents to enforce segregationist policies more earnestly and violently than ever before.

By the early 1900s, Jim Crow laws and the introduction of complicated voting rules and restrictions had so effectively disenfranchised African Americans that no Black congressmen represented a Southern state for decades after George H. White (NC) left the House of Representatives in 1901. In response to the desperate conditions African Americans faced throughout the United States, a group of social reformers and businessmen led by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter met at a hotel along the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Ontario, in July 1905. Participants hoped the Niagara Movement they began would represent a "mighty current"—like the Niagara River—that would bring sweeping changes for African American civil rights. Disagreements and funding issues hampered the movement's success, but the organization served as the foundation for the larger, more successful NAACP 4 years later.

In the wake of violent August 1908 race riots in Springfield, IL, and the lynching deaths of hundreds of Black men in southern states in the early 1900s, White and African American civil rights activists convened in New York City, NY, to discuss a solution to the increasing racism and violence against people of color in the United States. On February 12, 1909, a diverse group of social reformers including W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimke, Mary Church Terrell, Henry Moskowitz, William English Walling, and Mary White Ovington founded the NAACP. The date was chosen to coincide with the birthday of President Abraham Lincoln. Because its leadership championed civil rights for all people (including American Indians, immigrants, and Jews), the NAACP was more successful than its Niagara Movement predecessor. Within years of its founding, the NAACP played a critical role in litigation challenging voter restrictions (Guinn v. United States, 1915), residential segregation (Buchanan v. Warley, 1917), successfully won the right for African Americans to serve as military officers during World War I, and secured federal oversight of state criminal justice systems (Moore v. Dempsey, 1923). In 1954, the NAACP won one of the most important cases in American history when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that "separate but equal" was unconstitutional for academic institutions and public schools. The organization followed that victory with actions and litigation that desegregated buses in Montgomery, AL, in 1956, and integrated public schools in Little Rock, AR, in 1957. The NAACP was later instrumental in lobbying for passage of President Lyndon B. Johnson's landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the 115 years since its founding, the NAACP has remained one of the most influential civil rights and social reform organizations representing all minority groups in the United States. You can learn more about the NAACP using census data and records. For example:

In the decades since the founding of the NAACP in 1909, the United States has grown increasingly diverse and the Census Bureau's censuses and surveys have evolved to collect those data. For example, the 1910 Census found that the total population of the United States was 91,972,266—including more than 81.7 million Whites; 9.8 million Blacks ("Negro"); 265,683 Indians; 72,157 Japanese; 71,531 Chinese; and 3,175 Other Races. Fifty years later, the 1960 Census reported that the nation's population grew to 179,323,175 and included more than 158.8 million Whites; 18.8 million Blacks ("Negro"); and approximately 1.6 million "Other Races" including Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and others. More recently, data from the American Community Survey found that in 2022, the population of the United States was nearly 333.3 million, including 202.9 million people identifying as White alone; 40.6 million Black alone; 19.7 million Asian alone; 3.2 million American Indian and Alaska Native alone; 665,807 Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone; 24.4 million Some Other Race alone; and almost 41.8 million people identifying as Two or More Races.
Although the NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, the organization was not named the "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People" until the Niagara Movement conference in New York City, NY. Participants at that conference also elected the NAACP's first officers, including National President Moorfield Storey, Chairman of the Executive Committee William English Walling, Treasurer John E. Milholland, Disbursing Treasurer Oswald Garrison Villard, Executive Secretary Frances Blascoer, and Director of Publicity and Research W.E.B. Du Bois.
On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. This law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in public accommodations, in publicly owned or operated facilities, in employment and union membership, and in the registration of voters. In response to the law's passage, the Census Bureau began collecting voting and registration data in 1964. That year, the presidential election pitted Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson against Republican challenger Barry M. Goldwater. The Census Bureau reported that 58.5 percent of registered Black voters cast their ballots in 1964. In 1976, just 48.7 percent of Black voters headed to the polls for the presidential election in which Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter narrowly beat incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford. A record 62 percent of Blacks voted in the 2012 presidential election when Democrat Barack Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney by nearly 5 million popular votes.
Rosa Parks joined the Montgomery, AL, chapter of the NAACP in 1943. On December 1, 1955, Parks refused to surrender her seat on a public bus to a White passenger. With the NAACP's legal and financial assistance, her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of Montgomery's public transportation that ended after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the U.S. District Court of Alabama's ruling (Gayle v. Browder) stating that the city's buses must be desegregated. Learn more about Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott at our Rosa Parks and the Civil Rights Movement webpage.
The NAACP and its chief counsel Thurgood Marshall (later the U.S. Supreme Court's first African American associate justice) are responsible for one of the most consequential legal case in United States history—Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. In 1951, the Topeka, KS, public school system barred Oliver Brown's daughter Linda from attending the school near their home. Linda Brown was Black and the school close to her home was for White students only. As a result, Linda Brown walked to a distant bus stop so she could be driven to a segregated Black school. The NAACP's chief counsel Thurgood Marshall represented the Brown family and others forced to bus their children to Topeka's segregated Black schools. The U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas ruled against Brown citing the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" doctrine. Marshall appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case in December 1952 and December 1953. On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, ruling 9–0 that racially segregated public schools violated the "Equal Protection Clause" of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. U.S. Supreme Court justices responsible for the unanimous decision included Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Associate Justices Hugo Black, Stanley F. Reed, William O. Douglass, Felix Frankfurter, Robert H. Jackson, Harold H. Burton, Sherman Minton, and Thomas C. Clark.
Did you know that each February is Black History Month? Commemoration of Black history during the month of February began in 1926 with the establishment of "Negro History Week" by Carter G. Woodson. In 1970, the entire month was designated as "Black History Month." The theme for February 2024's observance is "African Americans and the Arts" celebrating the impact Black Americans have had on visual arts, music, culture, etc. Some of the people who may be honored during the month include: pianist Scott Joplin; singer Ella Fitzgerald; band leader Duke Ellington; dancer, director, and choreographer Alvin Ailey; and sculptor Augusta Savage. Learn more about this year's celebration at the Smithsonian Institution's Black History Month webpage.
Many famous Americans have been members of the NAACP. Just a few of the organization's notable members include: physicist Albert Einstein; first lady and member of the NAACP's board of directors Eleanor Roosevelt; Hall-of-Fame baseball player Jackie Robinson; actress and singer Lena Horne; Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall; social reformer Jane Addams; educator and activist Mary Mcleod Bethune; "Rat Pack" entertainer Sammie Davis, Jr.; and Civil Rights Movement leaders Martin Luther King, Jr. and Medgar Evers.
The Census Bureau's supplement to the Current Population Survey has collected voting and registration data every 2 years since the NAACP successfully lobbied for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1964, the Census Bureau reported that 69 percent of all voters aged 21 and older voted in the November 1964 presidential election. In the 1968 presidential election between Richard M. Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, 69.8 percent of voting-aged men and 66 percent of voting-aged women voted. For the first time during the 1980 presidential election in which Ronald Reagan beat incumbent Jimmy Carter, more women (59.4 percent) than men (59.1 percent) voted. More women than men have voted in every presidential election ever since. During the most recent 2020 Presidential Election between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, 155 million American voted, including 68.4 percent of registered women voted compared to 65 percent of registered men. Find more historic voting data at the Historical Reported Voting Rates webpage. Detailed data from the most recent 2020 presidential election can be found at the Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2020 webpage.
The NAACP opened its first national headquarters office in New York City, NY, in 1910. In 1996, the organizations headquarters moved to Baltimore, MD. With a population of 569,931 in 2022, Baltimore is the largest city in Maryland. The city also has one of the largest Black populations in the United States. In 2022, 61.2 percent of Baltimore's residents reported they were Black alone. Other cities with large populations of people reporting they were Black or African American alone in 2022 included Jackson, MS (82.2 percent); East Orange, NJ (80.6 percent); Lauderhill, FL (79.3 percent); Detroit, MI (77.8 percent); and Albany, GA (75.6 percent).
Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States have educated many of the nation's NAACP leaders and civil rights activists, as well as Black entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and academics including: NAACP executive director (1977–1992) Benjamin L. Hooks (LeMoyne-Owen College and Howard University); poet Langston Hughes (Lincoln University); Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris (Howard University); Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison (Howard University); Civil Rights Movement leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Morehouse College); NAACP chief counsel and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Thurgood Marshall (Lincoln and Howard Universities); actor, producer, director, and screenwriter Spike Lee (Morehouse College); Civil Rights Movement leader Ralph Abernathy (Alabama State University); aerospace engineer Lonnie Johnson (Tuskegee University); educator and author Booker T. Washington (Hampton University); NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson (West Virginia State University); NAACP cofounder, sociologist, Census Bureau advisor W.E.B. Du Bois (Fisk University); and NAACP cofounder, journalist, and educator Ida B. Welles (Fisk University). Learn more at our Historically Black Colleges and Universities webpage.
Neval H. Thomas, president of the Washington, DC, chapter of the NAACP, successfully lobbied Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to desegregate the agency—including the U.S. Census Bureau—in March 1928. Learn more about Hoover's integration of the Department of Commerce and Census Bureau from the article, Desegregating the Commerce Department.

The National Assocation for the Advancement of Colored People and the organization's chief council Thurgood Marshall are responsible for the pivotal Brown vs. Board of
Education of Topeka ruling ending "separate but equal" school segregration.

Fifty years later, the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling remains one of the most important and consequential court decisions in the history of the American judicial system.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

This Month in Census History

When budget cuts nearly ended the economic census in the 1950s, Secretary of Commerce Charles Sinclair Weeks gathered economic experts like Dr. Ralph J. Watkins to study the value of the program.

The Appraisal of Census Programs published by the "Watkins Commission" on February 16, 1954, argued that economic census data were too valuable to stop collecting. In response, Congress passed Public Law 83-411 in June 1954, providing for censuses of manufacturing, mineral industries, and other businesses (including the distributive trades and service establishments) in the year 1955 relating to the year 1954.

Today, Economic census are conducted every 5 years—most recently in 2022.

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Our NAACP Alumni

W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell were founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. They were also employees of the U.S. Census Bureau!

W.E.B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, MA, in 1868. He earned degrees from Fisk and Harvard Universities, and became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1895. A respected historian and sociologist, Du Bois was a university professor from 1894 to 1944.

Following the 1900 Census, Du Bois worked with the Census Bureau to interpret the census data about the Black population and counter racist theories about Black farmers. The Census Bureau published The Negro Farmer in 1904.

Mary Church Terrell was born in Memphis, TN, in 1863. She was one of the first Black women to earn a bachelor's (1884) and master's degree (1888) from Oberlin College. She met civil rights activist Ida B. Wells while teaching at the M Street School in Washington, DC. The two organized anti-lynching campaigns and cofounded the Colored Women's League—later the National Association of Colored Women.

During World War I, Terrell worked as a Census Bureau clerk tabulating census and survey data. She also helped desegregate the bathrooms near her desk.

In 1909, Du Bois, Terrell, and others gathered in New York City, NY, where they founded the NAACP on February 12, 1909, to fight racism and violence against all people of color in the United States.

Learn more about Terrell, Du Bois, and other Census Bureau employees at our Notable Alumni webpage.

Students at Bethune Cookman in 1943 from the Library of Congress

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HBCUs

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions founded prior to 1964 to educate African Americans. HBCU alumni are often ardent supporters of the NAACP and Census Bureau data.

Florida Baptist Academy graduate Eartha M.M. White (above) worked as a census taker in Jacksonville, FL, during the 1910 Census. Her business success allowed her to pursue charitable endeavors that still benefit Floridians today, including the Eartha White Nursing Home and the Clara White Mission providing shelter and training to the needy.

Ivanna Eudora Kean attended Hampton University in Hampton, VA. She was teaching in the U.S. Virgin Islands and worked as an enumerator during the 1917 Census of the U.S. territory. The Ivanna Eudora Kean High School in St. Thomas honors her 52 years of service to the island's students.

Howard University alumni Robert A. Pelham and Frederick Slade began their Census Bureau careers as tabulation clerks. Slade later became a population division section chief during the 1930 and 1940 Censuses, while Pelham patented census equipment and coauthored reports like Negro Population: 1790–1915 during his 29-year career.

Today, the Census Bureau recruits HBCU interns and alumni through programs like our partnership with Bowie State University in Bowie, MD.

Learn about some of our HBCU alumni at the Notable Alumni webpage.

Visit https://www.census.gov/history every month for the latest Census History Home Page!

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