Today is the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln and is also the 100th birthday of the NAACP. Its founding was scheduled for February 12, 1909, and this is considered the NAACP's birth date even though the meeting was postponed to May 30.
Billed as a conference of the Niagara Movement, the meeting was held in New York City's Henry Street Settlement House. The 40 people in attendance called themselves at first the National Negro Committee. Harvard Professor W. E. B. Du Bois helped organize the event and presided over it. One year later, at its second conference, the membership renamed themselves the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The first officers, as reported by Mary White Ovington were:
- National President, Moorfield Storey, Boston
- Chairman of the Executive Committee, William English Walling
- Treasurer, John E. Milholland - Disbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison Villard
- Executive Secretary, Frances Blascoer
- Director of Publicity and Research, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois.
John E. Milholland, the NAACP's first Treasurer, was a Presbyterian from New York City and Lewis, NY. A lifelong Republican, Milholland championed the rights of black Americans, in the Lincoln tradition, long after his party had ceased to care.
His daughter Inez Milhollandinsisted that a delegation from Howard University be allowed to march in the 1913 woman suffrage parade in Washington. She died in 1916 after an exhausting series of weeks campaigning against President Woodrow Wilson for not supporting the right of women to vote.
At a memorial for Inez in 1924, her father complained publicly about the absence of black people on the program.
Billed as a conference of the Niagara Movement, the meeting was held in New York City's Henry Street Settlement House. The 40 people in attendance called themselves at first the National Negro Committee. Harvard Professor W. E. B. Du Bois helped organize the event and presided over it. One year later, at its second conference, the membership renamed themselves the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The first officers, as reported by Mary White Ovington were:
- National President, Moorfield Storey, Boston
- Chairman of the Executive Committee, William English Walling
- Treasurer, John E. Milholland - Disbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison Villard
- Executive Secretary, Frances Blascoer
- Director of Publicity and Research, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois.
John E. Milholland, the NAACP's first Treasurer, was a Presbyterian from New York City and Lewis, NY. A lifelong Republican, Milholland championed the rights of black Americans, in the Lincoln tradition, long after his party had ceased to care.
His daughter Inez Milhollandinsisted that a delegation from Howard University be allowed to march in the 1913 woman suffrage parade in Washington. She died in 1916 after an exhausting series of weeks campaigning against President Woodrow Wilson for not supporting the right of women to vote.
At a memorial for Inez in 1924, her father complained publicly about the absence of black people on the program.
On the centennial of their founding, the NAACP called for equity in distribution of stimulus funds.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment