The NAACP

• The NAACP

  • NAACP established-1909- declared that it aimed to make America's 11 million black citizens economically, intellectually, politically & socially free & equal
  • Used several tactics
  • Early 1950's- NAACP newspaper The Crisis publicised black grievances, local NAACP branches initiated protests against segregated public places- lunch counters & theatres & the NAACP fought inequalities in education & in law courts
• NAACP

  National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
• NAACP litigation

  1. Aimed to overturn the Supreme Court's Plessey v Ferguson- 1869 ruling

  2. Declared the Jim Crow laws constitutional so long as facilities were 'separate but equal'
• NAACP won Supreme Court ruling against segregated universities in the South

  1950
• NAACP's greatest triumph was the Supreme Courts 1954 Brown ruling that separate schools in the South were not equal</b>
• Brown & other rulings removed all constitutional sanction for de jure segregation
• The Supreme Court could only declare that some deed or legislation was against the American Constitution
• The court had no powers of enforcement & its ruling could be ignored
• The NAACP's litigation strategy rarely bought a speedy practical solution to black American problems
• Alternative strategy of large-scale community protest was attempted in Montgomery-1956