NAACP

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in full National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Oldest and largest U.S. civil rights organization.

It was founded in 1909 to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality for African Americans; W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells were among its 60 founders. Headquartered in Baltimore, Md., the NAACP has undertaken litigation, political activity, and public education programs. In 1939 it organized the independent Legal Defense and Education Fund as its legal arm, which sued for school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). During World War II it pressed for desegregation of the armed forces, which was achieved in 1948. In 1967 its general counsel, Thurgood Marshall, became the U.S. Supreme Court's first African American justice.

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More on "NAACP" from the 32 Volume Encyclopædia Britannica:

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - interracial American organization created to work for the abolition of segregation and discrimination in housing, education, employment, voting, and transportation; to oppose racism; and to ensure African Americans their constitutional rights. The NAACP was created in 1909 by an interracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with ...

Wilkins, Roy - black American civil-rights leader who served as the executive director (1955-77) of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He was often referred to as the senior statesman of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

Evers-Williams, Myrlie - African American activist and the wife of civil rights leader Medgar Evers, whose racially motivated murder in 1963 made him a national icon. In 1995-98 Evers-Williams was the first woman to head the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Evers-Williams, Myrlie - In a dramatic illustration of how every vote does indeed count, on Feb. 18, 1995, Myrlie Evers-Williams was elected chairperson of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) by the closest of margins, 30 to 29. Plagued with accusations of impropriety, the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S., hoped that Evers-Williams would be able to ...

Rolle, Esther - American actress whose portrayal of Florida Evans in the 1970s television series "Maude" and "Good Times" brought her national recognition; long a campaigner against racial stereotyping, she temporarily left the cast of "Good Times" to protest the poor example set by her TV son in the series, and in 1990 she was awarded the NAACP Chairman's Civil Rights Leadership Award for her efforts to improve ...

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