100 Years Ago: The Founding of the NAACP

This week, 100 years ago, a most amazing meeting took place, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. This meeting resulted in the formation of the NAACP which went on to become the oldest, and arguably the most influential, of the civil rights organizations. The stated mission of the NAACP is:

"To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination."

It is hard to think of a more worthy mission than that, then or now. The NAACP has a year of events planned and a new drive to further its mission. Check it out at http://www.naacp.org/ and consider becoming a member.

As you probably know, NAACP stands for National Association for the Advancement of Colored People although the term colored people is these days retained mainly in accordance with tradition and is generally not used anywhere else.

One of the most amazing things to me about the founding of the NAACP is the diverse group of people who got things started at that first meeting. These days a cynic might think this group was assembled just for the sake of diversity. There several African-American men, two women (one white, one African-American) plus several white men, one of whom was Jewish.

But hey, their hearts were all in the same place, and it was the right place, and the rest, as they say, is history: a glorious 100-year history of improving the rights of all.
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