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.
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
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:
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
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.
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.
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.
The United States is home to 101 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Established before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, HBCUs primarily serve the African American community, like the students (above) using microscopes at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona, FL, in 1943.
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress