By Don Valentine
The postwar South left a swath of blood from all the lynchings during the Reconstruction era. In 2015 the Equal Justice Initiative studied the 12-year period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. According to The Hill.com, “…EJI reported more than 4,400 documented lynchings of Black people between 1877 and 1950 — an average of 60 lynchings each year. During Reconstruction, there were more than 160 lynchings each year on average, a total of 2,000 from 1865 to 1876. There have been more than 6,400 lynchings since the end of the Civil War, not including those that occurred after 1950.” Any cursory study of US history would strongly suggest the actual total was higher than the reported 4,400.
A 1908 race riot in the city of Springfield, Il, was the final tipping point that led to the creation of the N.A.AC.P. The organization’s historical records chronicled the origin: “Appalled at this rampant violence, a group of White liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard (both the descendants of famous abolitionists), William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth.”
Throughout the group’s history there have been accusations of the N.A.A.C.P of being a “Black Proxy” for White manipulation of the Black plight. The Black social action group “Philly’s 7th Ward” wrote, “The association was beholden to White folks from the beginning (less than 10 of the 60 founding members of the N.A.A.C.P. were Black), and today they haven’t stumbled far from their original course.” A Library of Congress article noted the leadership and financial support from wealthy Whites, “…Moskowitz’s involvement in the NAACP was indicative of early Jewish support; Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsh, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise were also founders. The Spingarn brothers served as officers, and Jacob Schiff, Julius Rosenwald, and Herbert Lehman contributed funds.”
The antiquated and lately controversial name of the group came from the White founders. A summary by the Ann Arbor District Library chronicled the name’s origin, “From the outset, these founding fathers recognized the need for as well as the desire to do something positive and concrete towards bettering human relations, especially so far as the Negro citizen was concerned, and thus the name N.A.A.C.P. was chosen.” It should not be forgotten that 1909 was just 44 years after the Civil War. “Colored” was one of the few benign names used for our people. Since 1909 the group has earned its moniker as the “Leading Civil Rights Organization” in the country. Godspeed to another 114 years.
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