The+History+of+the+NAACP

The Niagara Movement
====The Niagra Movement was a Black Civil Rights organization, founded in 1905 by [|W.E.B Du Bois]and [|William M. Trotte]==== The Niagara Movement's Declaration of Principles (1905) The objective of the Declaration, according to DuBois is to stop the treatment of African Americans as second-class citizens. "We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now... We are men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win." W.E.B Du Bois.
 * ====In 1905, W.E.B met with other supporters on the Canadian side of the Niagara Fall to discuss demands and Principles to end racial segregation disenfranchisement towards African Americans.====
 * ====The group originally planned to meet on the American side of Niagara Falls. There was no American hotel that would accept the group. And as a result, that is why the group met on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.====
 * At the meeting, the group created a list of demand and Principles which included equality in economics and education.However, the group was able to do little to effect legislation.
 * Click here for more on a small video presentation on the history of the Niagara Movement

Click here for learning modules on the Niagara Movement. Click [|here] for an interactive lesson plan on Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Rural Tennesse for an interactive lesson plan on the W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington in Rural Tennesse



==National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)==
 * The NAACP was founded during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt who is the 26th President of the United States.
 * The NAACP is an organization established in 1909 by a bi-racial group of men and women. It started with sixty black and white citizens, including W.E.B Du Bois.
 * Throughout the struggle of African Americans to secure their rights, violence often broke out and the founders of the NAACP found this to be a tragic event and sought to reform this.
 * Thus, the NAACP was founded on the belief that non-violent protests and legal actions were the most effective ways to secure the equal rights for all Americans.

Over the years, the NAACP persuaded presidents to end racial discrimination in the hiring of workers and in terms of military service. From the original sixty founding members, the organization grew to its over 500,000 current members. Presently, the NAACP headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland. One of the most famous lawyers of the NAACP was [|Thurgood Marshall] who went on to become a member of the Supreme Court.

Pushed by the combined power of Booker T. Washington’s organizations and DuBois’ Niagara Movement, the NAACP created a middle road of interracial cooperation. However, since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, the power of the NAACP has been waning and it has been suffering a decreasing number of memberships and a series of internal scandals.

Click [|here] for a NAACP timeline from 1905-2008 The [|3 Founding Members]of the NAACP Click [|here] to read about the women who played prominent roles in developing the NAACP
 * =Women of the NAACP=
 * Ida B. Wells
 * Mary White Ovington
 * Mary Church Terrell

=**William Edward Burghardt Du Bois**=




 * **Philadelphia Negro** (1899) is the first sociological case study of African Americans. The study went on for fifteen months gathering information on social issues African American were dealing with in 7th Ward, Pennsylvania
 * Throughout the study, Du Bois saw the reality many African American delts with.
 * **Souls of Black Folk** (1903)
 * //Double Consciousness.//
 * It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tap of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

Click [|here] for an introductory video on the life of W.E.B Du Bois Click [|here] for an in-depth video on the concept of Double Consciousness



**Moorfield Storey**

A prominent white lawyer from Boston, Massachusetts was one of the first founders of the NAACP ( 1909-1915)
Click here for a summary of [|Moorfield Storey]
 * Born in 1845 in Roxbury MA. Moorfield Storey was the president of the American Bar Association in 1896 and a representative of the Anit-Imperialist League (1905-1921).He is famously known for being an advocate in gaining independence for the Philippine Islands, during the 1898 Spanish-American War. [|Statement against Acquiring the Philippine Islands]

Anne Moody was a Mississippi native who joined the NAACP in the post-Civil War era, along with other pro-rights organizations. She detailed her experiences in her memoir, //Coming of Age in Mississippi.//