Julie Mack: 13 facts you may not know about the NAACP

Julie Mack | By Julie Mack | The Kalamazoo Gazette
on September 21, 2013 at 10:00 AM, updated September 28, 2013 at 4:28 AM

KALAMAZOO, MI -- Which first lady served on the national board of the NAACP?

What made Martin Luther King Jr. stepped aside from the NAACP to start the Southern Christian Leadership Council?

naacp.jpgHistorical photo from the Kalamazoo Metropolitan Branch of the NAACP.
Why did the NAACP call itself an association for "colored people" versus Negroes?

The annual Michigan convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is being held this weekend in Kalamazoo. Below are some interesting facts about the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization.

1. The NAACP was the brainchild of white progressives in response to a race riot in Springfield, Ill., and its official formation date is Feb. 12, 1909, designed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.


3. Prominent black scholar W.E.B. DuBois, the only African-American among the NAACP's initial executives, suggested the name for the organization, pushing for the term "colored people" to include all people of color. DuBois resigned from the NAACP in 1934 when he began advocating for black separatism.


5. Among famous whites who belonged to the NAACP: Albert Einstein, John Dewey, Jane Addams and Eleanor Roosevelt. The latter served on the NAACP board of directors. Famous African-Americans in the NAACP include Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr. and Lena Horne.


7. The NAACP's best-known legal victory was Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling outlawing school segregation. The NAACP's lead lawyer in the case was Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first African-American Supreme Court justice.

8. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. both belonged to the Montgomery, Ala., NAACP. But as a result of the Montgomery bus boycott, Alabama outlawed the NAACP, and so King and others formed the Southern Christian Leadership Council. Unlike the NAACP, which tended to wage its wars in the court, SCLC emphasized nonviolent direct action.


10. NAACP's greatest legislative victories were the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination in the workplace and public venues, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which establish federal oversight of elections in places with a history of disenfranchising minority voters. This past June, the Supreme Court rolled back an important provision of the 1965 law.

11. The Metropolitan Kalamazoo Branch of the NAACP was formed in 1946.  The group organized the boycott of Van Avery Drugstore in 1963, the first major civil rights protest in Kalamazoo, and was behind the lawsuit that forced desegregation of Kalamazoo Public Schools in 1971. The attorney who filed the NAACP lawsuit was Richard Enslen, now a retired federal judge. The lead plaintiff was the stepdaughter of the late Robert B. Jones, then an Upjohn chemist who went onto become mayor of Kalamazoo and then state representative.

12. According to its 2011 federal tax return, the national NAACP has a budget of $32 million and paid its executive director, Benjamin Todd Jealous, a salary of $284,861. The organization is overseen by a 64-member board.

13. The NAACP says it has 2 million "activists," but has been evasive in recent years about paid membership. According to its tax return, the organization collected $2.8 million in dues in 2011, which would translate to about 100,000 dues-paying members. The annual dues are $30 for adults and $15 for students.

