Scope and Content Note
The records of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) span the years 1842-2019, with the bulk of material dating from 1919 to 2004. The collection traces the history of the nation's oldest civil rights organization from its founding in 1909 into the twenty-first century.
The collection is arranged in ten parts, six of which have a chronological focus. The bulk of Part I covers 1919-1939; Part II dates primarily from 1940 to 1955; Part III is concentrated in the period 1956-1965; Parts IV and VI document the years 1966-1978; and the bulk of Part VIII dates from 1978 to 1991. Three parts contain the records of a particular department or contractor. Part V encompasses the records of the NAACP Legal Department, principally from 1966 to 1995. Part VII consists of the records of the Gilbert Jonas Company, a public relations firm engaged by the NAACP to raise funds. Part IX contains the files of the association's Washington Bureau that served as a liaison between the NAACP and the United States Congress and monitored government agencies administering federal regulations and programs. Part X does not adhere to either focus. Chronologically, many files in this part pick up where Part VIII leaves off, with material dating mostly from the period 1991 to 2010. Part X, however, also comprises older material that documents a range of programs and departments dating from the 1960s through the 1980s. In many instances, these files expand upon the activities of the NAACP documented in Parts IV-IX.
The records are largely arranged as originally organized by the NAACP in its offices. Although their organizational formats may vary as a result, the parts often contain similar types of material. The records include Board of Directors files, annual convention files, general office files, branch files, and legal case files.
Board of Directors files include correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports, and committee records documenting the board's role in setting policy, amending the association's constitution, appointing national officers, authorizing large allocations of funds, approving the formation of branches, adjudicating branch disputes, and setting litigation and lobbying goals. The board's debates and decisions are recorded in minutes of its monthly meetings supplemented by reports submitted by the association's executive secretary or director, general counsel, treasurer, branch directors, and department heads. Committee files reflect the board's work regarding awards and scholarships, branches, budgets, conventions, departmental programs, elections, litigation, membership, personnel, policies, resolutions, public relations, youth work, and other topics of concern to the association. Annual convention files contain speeches, session minutes, programs, delegate lists, press releases and other publicity material, and material related to award ceremonies, memorial services, staff assignments, security arrangements, and workshops. The files highlight the annual convention's role as a forum for passing resolutions that guided NAACP policy, an opportunity for local and national NAACP leaders to interact, and a public relations event. The Board of Directors and annual convention files are organized as separate series in Part I. In Part II, they are included in the General Office File series. In Parts III, IV, VI, VIII, and X they form part of the Administrative File series.
Most parts include a general office file that documents the work of the NAACP's national staff, especially the executive secretary or director who oversaw the day-to-day operation of the national office and served as the principal spokesperson for the organization. Featured are correspondence, memoranda, reports, travel files, speeches, and writings of James Weldon Johnson from 1920 to 1931, Walter Francis White from 1931 to 1955, Roy Wilkins from 1955 to 1977, Benjamin L. Hooks from 1977 to 1993, Ben Chavis from 1993 to 1994, and Kweisi Mfume from 1996 to 2002. Similar types of material are also included for other national officers and key staff members including deputy executive secretaries or directors, Crisis magazine editors, and department heads. The general office file documents the broad range of civil rights activities administered by the national staff concerning economic development and opportunity, education and training, health, housing, labor, and military and veterans affairs. Material related to this work and the NAACP's collaboration with other organizations is filed by topic, name of organization, or by the name of the relevant NAACP department. Departmental or programmatic records that are particularly voluminous have been organized as separate series. This is the case in Parts II, III, VI, and X for the Washington Bureau, Labor Department, Training Department, Gilbert Jonas Company, and records related to armed services and veterans affairs, voter education, and finances. Also located in the general office file is material relating to administrative matters including the association's constitution and bylaws, annual reports, organizational histories, events, fundraising, personnel, public relations, and training. In lieu of a general office file, Part I includes a subject file within the Administrative File series. Part II contains a general office file organized as a separate series. In Parts III, IV, VI, and VIII, the file is a subseries in the Administrative File series. In Part X, the file is a subseries in the Administrative File and integrated into other series by topic or department.
Branch files documenting activities of local NAACP branches, state conferences, and regional offices consist largely of communications between the national office and local, state, and regional offices retained by the national office. They do not include records retained in the local offices. Correspondence, memoranda, reports, programs, complaints, award submissions, and newsletters sent to the national office provide information about branch formation and reorganization, elections, internal disputes, membership drives, fundraising campaigns, meetings, conferences, training, and local civil rights activities and programs. Reports and memoranda of field secretaries, field directors, and regional directors are particularly useful in tracing the progress of civil rights on the local level.
The collection's extensive legal files document the NAACP's efforts to end racial discrimination and segregation through federal and state courts. Included are affidavits, briefs, correspondence, depositions, exhibits, interrogatories, lawyer's notes, petitions, summaries, and trial transcripts representing the NAACP's litigation efforts from its first case defending Pink Franklin in 1910 to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision in 1978. Until 1956, the NAACP's legal activities were carried out by its Legal Defense Fund. The fund's files are organized as Legal File series in Parts I and II. In 1956 the Legal Defense Fund separated from the association to preserve the NAACP's tax-exempt status and was recreated as an independent entity called the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Part III contains its records as a separate series. The NAACP continued to pursue litigation through its own Legal Department, however, and its records from the mid-1960s through 1995 constitute Part V of the collection. Additional case files from this period dating to 2000 can be found in Parts VIII and X.
Part I
Part I spans the years 1909-1941, with the bulk of material dating from 1919 to 1939. Part I is arranged in nine series: Board of Directors File , Annual Conferences , Administrative File , Legal File , Youth File , Crisis File , Branch Files , Addition , and Oversize . The NAACP's founding and early development is documented through board of directors' minutes and reports, annual conference files, and the correspondence, memoranda, office diaries, speeches, and writings of its founders and early officers including W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Hamilton Houston, Addie W. Hunton, James Weldon Johnson, Daisy E. Lampkin, Thurgood Marshall, E. Frederic Morrow, Mary White Ovington, William Pickens, John R. Shillady, Arthur B. and Joel Elias Spingarn, Moorfield Storey, Oswald Garrison Villard, and Walter Francis White.
In addition to documenting the association's founding and organizational development, Part I traces the evolution of the NAACP's earliest public campaigns to end racial discrimination and violence against African Americans. The association's antilynching campaign was prominent among these first efforts. Included are files on antilynching legislation, conferences, meetings, statements, fund-raising campaigns, the Silent Protest Parade of 1917, and extensive background files on lynching practices, including published and unpublished studies, statistics, clippings, and a geographical file. A flag flown at the NAACP headquarters following reported lynchings accompanies the collection. Part I's chronological scope encompasses World War I in files documenting discrimination experienced by African-American soldiers and “work or fight” laws passed by several states during the war. Labor issues also figure prominently in Part I including the NAACP's opposition to racial segregation in federal agencies, discriminatory hiring practices in public works projects such as the Hoover Dam and Tennessee Valley Authority, labor abuses in the Mississippi Flood Control Project, and the discriminatory practices of labor unions.
Other topics covered in Part I include interracial marriage, Haiti, peonage, the film Birth of a Nation, the nomination of John J. Parker to the Supreme Court, William E. Borah's presidential candidacy, the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, the Amenia Conferences, and the NAACP's support of the Scottsboro defendants and members of the 24th Infantry. The Legal File series documents the association's earliest forays into the courtroom. Included are files documenting the NAACP's defense of George Crawford, Pink Franklin, and Ossian Sweet, a case argued by Clarence Darrow. Other case files document the association's legal attacks on restrictive residential covenants, particularly in Washington, D.C.; its defense of voting rights, most notably in Nixon v. Herndon; and its demand for equal pay for African-American teachers and equal access to education for African-American students, a right argued in Lloyd Gaines's lawsuit against the University of Missouri Law School. The subject file contains material relating to the American Fund for Public Service's funding of many of the association's early education cases.
Additional material covering the NAACP's founding and early work can be found in Part II.
Part II
Part II spans the years 1910-1955, with the bulk of the material dating from 1940 to 1955. It is organized in thirteen series: General Office File , Legal File , Branch File , Financial File , Youth File , Crisis File , Veterans Affairs File , Washington Bureau File , Scrapbooks , Miscellany , Printed Matter , Addition , and Oversize . Documented in Part II are the NAACP's efforts during World War II to end segregation and racial discrimination in defense industries and to combat violence, segregation, and discrimination experienced by African Americans in military service. Files relate to the NAACP's lobbying for a nondiscriminatory selective service system, its advocacy of equal access to housing and recreational facilities, and its defense of court-martialed servicemen and women, including those involved in the Port Chicago, California, mutiny. Investigations into the military experience of African Americans by Jean Byers and Walter Francis White are also included. Staff files in the General Office File series contain White's notes from his tour of the European and Pacific theaters of operation in 1944 and 1945.
Files dating from the postwar years document the NAACP's lobbying of the Harry S. Truman administration and Congress in behalf of an omnibus civil rights bill; an end to discrimination in healthcare, housing, transportation, and veterans' programs; and the eradication of lynching, poll taxes, and restrictive residential covenants. Records relating to the National Civil Rights Mobilization campaign in 1950 are filed under “Civil rights mobilization” in the general office file. The Legal File series documents the NAACP's ongoing legal efforts to end discrimination in higher education. Relevant cases include Gaines v. University of Missouri, Sipuel v. University of Oklahoma, McLauren v. University of Missouri, and Sweatt v. Painter. Also included are case files from the association's primary and secondary school cases. Files pertaining to the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954 include notes, briefs, depositions, background information, medical and psychological reports, and records of associated cases.
Other topics covered in Part II include the March on Washington movement, the Committee on Fair Employment Practices, wartime riots, NAACP responses to allegations of communist influence, the Fight for Freedom fund-raising campaign, police brutality, and racial stereotyping in film, television, and radio.
Part III
Part III spans the years 1909-1965, with the bulk of the material dating from 1956 to 1965. The records are arranged in ten series: Administrative File , Branch File , Financial File , Youth File , Crisis File , Washington Bureau , Miscellany , Printed Matter , NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund , and Oversize . Part III relates to the NAACP's continuing efforts to secure equal access to employment, healthcare, housing, recreational facilities, transportation, and voting rights; its ongoing legal struggle to end school segregation; and its extensive lobbying for civil rights legislation. The records document an expanding civil rights movement that included the proliferation of sit-in protests, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Freedom Riders, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
The Administrative File series details the NAACP's participation in or support of these movements as well as its response to leadership challenges from other organizations including the Congress of Racial Equality, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Reports and correspondence in both the Branch File and the Youth File series concern the progress of civil rights and the development of tactics used to end discrimination on the local level. Material relating to the murder of Mississippi field secretary, Medgar Wiley Evers, in 1964 can be found in the Administrative File . The association's increased fund-raising activities during this period are highlighted in files relating to the establishment of the NAACP Special Contribution Fund and the 1964 fund-raising telethon, “Freedom Television Spectacular.”
Part IV
Spanning the years 1965-1975, Part IV is organized in six series: Administrative File , Branch File , Youth File , Miscellany , Printed Matter , and Oversize . The late 1960s and 1970s are more extensively documented in Part VI received by the Library of Congress after Parts IV and V had been arranged and described.
Part IV documents the broadening of the NAACP's strategy beyond its traditional reliance on litigation and lobbying to include the creation of greater numbers of community-based programs. The general office file in the Administrative File series includes material on housing programs, labor activities, the Mississippi Emergency Relief Program created in 1967 to alleviate hunger in Mississippi's poorest districts, the Pupil Incentive Program, and the Register and Vote Campaign. These and other programs are more thoroughly documented in departmental records in Part VI. Other topics covered in Part IV include Africa, civil rights, the Black Power movement, federal and state agencies and programs, the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth, Adam Clayton Powell's expulsion from the United States House of Representatives, urban riots, Vietnam, and the slaying of Martin Luther King Jr. Material concerning the NAACP's relationship with other civil rights organizations is filed under “Leagues and organizations” in the general office file.
Part V
Part V consists of records of the NAACP Legal Department and spans the years 1842-1997, with the bulk of the material dating from 1966 to 1995. Part V is arranged in three series: Legal Department (with subseries Case File and General Office File ), Classified , and Oversize . Supplemental legal files from this period are contained in Part VIII. The Case File in Part V demonstrates the scope of the NAACP's litigation from the 1960s to the 1990s, focusing in particular on school desegregation in the North and combating job discrimination. Among school desegregation cases featured in the collection are Bradley v. Milliken, Reed v. Rhodes, Berry v. School District, Liddell v. Board of Education, Board of School Directors v. Wisconsin, and the Boston de facto school segregation case that led to court-ordered busing in 1974. The main employment cases include Ogletree v. McNamara, Cox v. Consolidated Rail Corp., and the Eglin Air Force Base cases.
Other noteworthy cases include NAACP v. Alabama involving the right of the NAACP to operate in that state; Jackson, Mississippi, demonstration cases; Texas Southern University riot law cases; Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and Weber v. Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp. reverse discrimination cases; Federal Communications Commission minority broadcasting cases; Geter/Williams wrongful conviction cases; and NAACP Special Contribution Fund v. Atkins, the association's suit against some of its former salaried lawyers over legal fees. The Claiborne Hardware Co. v. NAACP damage suit, a case from Port Gibson, Mississippi, necessitated the posting of a $1.5 million dollar cash bond by the NAACP within thirty days in order to appeal the 1976 decision.
The General Office File includes name and subject files compiled by the Legal Department from information that arrived daily in the office for use in preparing cases or tracking issues of possible future interest. Located under the heading of “Reports” are periodic summaries submitted by the general counsel, the Legal Department, and other members of the legal staff. Requests for legal assistance in the files were usually written to the Legal Department either by imprisoned African Americans or by their relatives. The department denied a majority of these requests, especially those involving criminal cases. Of these voluminous files, only those containing the largest number of surnames, H, J, and W, have been retained. Similar requests for assistance, however, can also be found in the staff file. Staff files document the dismissal of Lewis M. Steel in 1968 and subsequent resignations in support of him by the other attorneys on staff.
Part VI
Part VI spans the years 1884-1992, with the bulk of material dating from 1967 to 1978. It is organized in eleven series: Administrative File , Armed Services and Veterans Affairs , Branch Department , Education Department , Fund-Raising Department , Housing Department , Labor Department , Training Department , Voter Education Project , Miscellany , and Oversize . See also Part IV for additional files related to the NAACP's activities during the late 1960s and 1970s.
Departmental records in Part VI document the establishment of a number of NAACP-sponsored community-based programs. Included in the Housing Department series are files relating to the National Afro-American Builders Corporation which assisted minority builders in securing bonds and contracts; the NAACP National Housing Development Corporation which funded nonprofit low and moderate-income housing projects; the establishment of NAACP daycare centers; and the NAACP Equal Opportunity Tour of European Industrialized Building Systems. The Fund-Raising Department series contains records from the Mississippi Emergency Relief Program and the “Freedom Television Spectacular” telethon. Summer programs in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are documented in the Training Department series. Other topics include the NAACP Image Awards, ghettos, urban riots, the Supreme Court nominations of Clement F. Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, voter registration campaigns, the founding of NAACP prison branches, and Claiborne Hardware Co v. NAACP, the Mississippi case that threatened to bankrupt the association. The Miscellany series contains early NAACP pamphlets on the lynching of women and segregation in rail travel and an 1884 scrapbook on Civil War figures and African Americans in post-Reconstruction America.
Part VII
Part VII contains the records of the Gilbert Jonas Company , a public relations firm that the association engaged for thirty years to raise funds through direct mail campaigns and other means. Part VII spans the years 1964-1995 and is arranged in the Gilbert Jonas Company and Oversize series.
Files documenting the company's fund-raising activities for the NAACP include annual reports, benefit events, direct mail campaigns, financial records, general correspondence, memoranda, and material relating to the NAACP Special Contribution Fund. The company also vetted the financial feasibility and soundness of the organization's national programs, an oversight function documented in annual reports, general correspondence, financial records, memoranda, and files related to specific programs, divisions, and departments, such as Back to School/Stay in School, the NAACP Program Division, and the NAACP Legal Department. Major fund-raising activities included benefits, charitable foundation and corporate solicitations, and direct mail campaigns directed at NAACP members and the general public.
Part VIII
Part VIII spans the years 1867-1999, with the bulk of the material dating from 1978 to 1991. It is arranged in three series: Administrative File , Legal Department File , and Oversize . Files documenting the NAACP's leadership in reevaluating the direction of the civil rights movement in the late 1970s and 1980s include material from several prominent conferences and meetings, such as the NAACP Leadership Summit Conference held in Chicago in 1978, the Black Leadership Meeting held in New York in 1980, the NAACP Emergency Summit held in Washington, D.C., in 1985, and the NAACP Conference on the Present Crisis held in Washington, D.C., in 1989. The NAACP's reassessment of its programs and policies is reflected in long-range planning documents located in the Administrative File's general office file.
The NAACP also undertook additional programs during this period, some of which moved beyond the traditional focus of civil rights organizations. Part VIII documents the Board of Directors' controversial decision to develop an energy policy. The general office file includes records related to the NAACP National Conference on Energy, held in Washington, D.C., in 1977. Many of the association's newer programs focused on the need to increase minority economic opportunity. The Economic Policy Advisory Council and Economic Development Department oversaw various programs, including Black Dollar Days, Operation Fair Share, and minority business support programs. The NAACP published a number of studies including reports on the recording industry and the film and television industries.
Education initiatives pursued by the NAACP and documented in the general office file include Afro-Academic Cultural Technological Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO), Back-to-School/Stay-in-School, the NAACP Bakke Symposium, and NAACP Personal Incentive Programs. Health programs include the organization of health fairs and mobile health units.
Other topics covered in Part VIII include affirmative action, Andrew Young's resignation from the United Nations, Atlanta child murders, Black-Jewish relations, busing, church reparations, criminal justice, Jesse Jackson's presidential candidacy, the Supreme Court nominations of Robert H. Bork and Clarence Thomas, the tobacco industry, urban ghettos, relocation of NAACP headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland, and the conflict between executive director Benjamin L. Hooks and board chair Margaret Bush Wilson which resulted in Hooks's suspension in 1983.
Part VIII includes material dated considerably before 1978, much of it printed matter, discovered when NAACP's national offices moved to Baltimore in 1986. Of particular note are Walter Francis White's correspondence, interviews, speeches, testimony, and writings.
Part IX
Part IX includes records of the Washington Bureau spanning the years 1914-1993, with the bulk of the material concentrated between 1950 and 1991. The records document the function of the bureau as a liaison between the NAACP and Congress. As the association's representative in Washington, the bureau assumed responsibility for tracking and influencing federal legislation, monitoring government agencies administering federal regulations and programs, testifying before Congress, and working with other organizations with similar objectives. The records are arranged as a single series, Washington Bureau , and thereunder in ten subseries. Clarence M. Mitchell's directorship from 1950 to 1978 is documented in the General Office File . Althea T. L. Simmons's directorship from 1979 to 1990 is covered in the remaining nine subseries: General Correspondence , Congressional File , Government Agencies , Counsel , Legislative Mobilization , Conferences , Organizations File , Subject File , and National Offices .
Part X
Part X spans the years 1911-2019, with the bulk of the material dating from 1960 to 2010. It is arranged into twenty series: Administrative File, Armed Services and Veterans Affairs, Branch Department, Crisis File, Economic Development Programs, Education Department and Programs, Financial File, Gilbert Jonas Company, Labor Department, Legal Department, Mississippi Papers, Program Division, Public Relations Department, Region II, Region V, Training Department, Voter Education and Empowerment, Washington Bureau, Restricted, and Oversize. A fuller description of each series and a list of its contents can be accessed in the series descriptions within the container list.
The files in Part X represent many eras of the association. Files from the 1960s and 1970s are noteworthy for the emphasis on activities at the branch level, especially in Mississippi and other southern states from Region V, including the work of Medgar Wiley Evers, Charles Evers, and Ruby Hurley. Records from the 1970s and 1980s expand upon programs represented in earlier parts of the collection that address economic reciprocity for African Americans, health and wellness issues, education initiatives, and energy policy. They also document issues that come to the fore in the 1990s, including a renewed focus on voter empowerment, police brutality, and the environment.
Part X documents the challenges the association faced in the 1990s, including the transition from long-standing executive director Benjamin L. Hooks to Ben Chavis. Controversies surrounding Chavis’s brief tenure are represented, including his firing by the Board of Directors in 1994. Part X also documents the NAACP’s financial crisis of the mid-1990s that led to significant budget cuts, the release of many staff, and a reshaping of the association’s organizational structure. Also represented is the termination of the NAACP’s contract with Gilbert Jonas Company and subsequent fundraising oversight by the Development Department.
Files from the 2000s are less complete in their scope but are noteworthy for the documentation of the NAACP centennial celebration, including increased fundraising campaigns, events, and publications. There is very little documentation of Kweisi Mfume’s later years in office and Ben Jealous’s tenure as executive director. No files belonging to Bruce Gordon or executive directors after Jealous exist in this part. Individuals whose activities are well represented in multiple roles within the association include Althea T. L. Simmons, Mildred Bond Roxborough, Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., Samuel D. Wright, John J. Johnson, Herbert Hill, Earl T. Shinhoster, William Penn, and Dennis Courtland Hayes.