National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) This organization first met on 12 February 1909 at New York, in response to the Springfield, Ill., race riot of 1908 to fight discrimination. Its governing structure was organized under president Moorefield Storey in May 1910; its first officers were all white, except for W. E. B. Du Bois. It lobbied for a national law to forbid lynching, funded litigation to reestablish protection for civil rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, and fought discrimination of all types; but it conceded the task of improving economic opportunity and providing social services to the National Urban League. Within a decade, the NAACP had over 400 branches and had displaced the Niagara movement as the voice of civil rights progress. By the 1950s, its leadership was primarily black. It had 445,000 members by 1963, and ranked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as the two most influential organizations of the civil rights movement. The NAACP officially rejected black power at its Los Angeles convention of 4–9 July 1966. The NAACP gradually eclipsed other civil rights groups after 1975, and had an estimated 650,000 members and an annual budget of $15,000,000 in 1994. The organization faced increasing financial pressure in 1994 due to a $3,500,000 deficit, and attracted growing criticism for the efforts of President Benjamin Chavis to build alliances with spokesmen for extremist groups and black separatists, especially the Nation of Islam.