Happy Birthday Abraham Lincoln and the NAACP

Heather Cox Richardson writing on her Letters from an American substack reminds us that February 12th was the birthday of Lincoln and the NAACP.

"The spark for the organization of the NAACP was a race riot in Springfield, Illinois, on August 14 and 15, 1908. The violence broke out after the sheriff transferred two Black prisoners, one accused of murder and another of rape, to a different town out of concern for their safety.

"Furious that they had been prevented from vengeance against the accused, a mob of white townspeople looted businesses and burned homes in Springfield’s Black neighborhood. They lynched two Black men and ran most of the Black population out of town. At least eight people died, more than 70 were injured, and at least $3 million of damage in today’s money was done before 3,700 state militia troops quelled the riot.

"When he and his wife visited Springfield days later, journalist William English Walling found white citizens outraged that their Black neighbors had forgotten 'their place.' Walling claimed he had heard a dozen times: 'Why, [they] came to think they were as good as we are!'

"'If these outrages had happened thirty years ago…, what would not have happened in the North?' wrote Walling. 'Is there any doubt that the whole country would have been aflame?'"

The NAACP was born in 1909, and issued a letter.

"The call continued, 'Silence under these conditions means tacit approval,' and it warned that permitting the destruction of Black rights would destroy rights for everyone. 'Hence,'  it said, 'we call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.'

"A group of sixty people, Black and white, signed the call, prominent reformers all, and the next year an interracial group of 300 men and women met to create a permanent organization. After a second meeting in May 1910, they adopted a formal name, and the NAACP was born, although they settled on the centennial of Lincoln’s birth as their actual beginning."

The NAACP brought racial injustice to the public's attention. 

"In 1946 it was NAACP leader White who brought the story of World War II veteran Isaac Woodard, blinded by a police officers after talking back to a bus driver, to President Harry S. Truman. Afterward, Truman convened the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, directly asking its members to find ways to use the federal government to strengthen the civil rights of racial and religious minorities in the country.

"Truman later said, 'When a Mayor and City Marshal can take a… Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up and put out… his eyes, and nothing is done about it by the State authorities, something is radically wrong with the system.' And that is what the NAACP had done, and would continue to do: highlight that the inequalities in American society were systemic rather than the work of a few bad apples, bearing witness until 'the believers in democracy' could no longer remain silent."

 

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