A hundred years after its establishment, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization is still expanding its influence, taking on universal issues and bringing more causes, movements and communities under its wing.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, L, CNN analyst T.J. Holmes, Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP Detroit chapter President Rev. Wendell Anthony during the group’s annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner on May 3. PHOTOS: Khalil AlHajal/TAAN

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded in New York on Feb. 12, 1909, in the midst of race riots and rampant discrimination, by 60 people who signed a proclamation known as “The Call.”
Initially called the National Negro Committee, the group would become known as the NAACP.

Today, a new young leader of the national organization has asserted intentions of expanding the group’s focus from civil rights for African Americans to human rights for everyone.

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous, 36, has said he hopes to continue to “transform this country, not just for black people, but all people.”

At the Detroit-branch NAACP’s annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner on May 3, civil rights and social justice activist Rev. Al Sharpton, who was presented a Freedom and Justice award at the massive event, said struggling peoples have to work together more to fight for common causes.

Revs. Al Sharpton, L, and Wendell Anthony, R, with iconic Detroit soul singer Aretha Franklin as the Detroit-Chapter NAACP presents Franklin a Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner at Cobo Hall.

“It’s time for us to tie our ropes together and pull our people out,” he said to a crowd of 8,000 at Cobo Hall in Detroit.
The group calls the event the largest dinner in the world, with ethnic and community leaders from throughout the region seated at four giant, elevated head tables surrounding hundreds of round dinner tables below.

“We don’t have the luxury of competing, one group against the other. We have to all do our part, as the NAACP has done for the last 100 years,” Sharpton said.

Imad Hamad, regional director of the American Arab Anti-Disrimination Committee (ADC), said the Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner represents what Arab American community rights advocates strive for, in its size, influence and symbolism of what the group has achieved over a century.

“The NAACP experience is a true inspiration to us as an Arab American community and to ADC in particular,” Hamad said.

The first major goal of the NAACP when it was established was to end the lynching of African Americans, educating the public through protests, political appeals and ads in major newspapers.

The group would later work to desegregate the military and overturn Jim Crow laws. NAACP lawyers have won countless courtroom battles in the fight to allow African Americans access to equal education, employment opportunities and voting rights.

Evening the playing field for African Americans in politics was another major goal over the decades, and now, after the nation’s first black president has taken office, NAACP leadership has said it will again expand its focus to include health care, climate change and world conflicts.

The group has 225,000 members, 1,700 branches and a 64-member executive board.

New goals the group has declared include reducing disparities in law enforcement sentencing and educational opportunities, creating policing policies to help solve the high number of homicides in African American communities and creating drug diversion programs as an alternative to prison.

President of the Detroit-branch NAACP Rev. Wendell Anthony said at the Fight for Freedom Dinner that as much progress as the group and African Americans have made, while now, “we can live where we want and say what we feel,” there is much work left to do.

“We must continue to march on until the ultimate victory is won,” he said.

Detroit-branch NAACP Executive Director Heaster Wheeler

Detroit NAACP Executive Director Heaster Wheeler said unfair insurance rates, unequal law enforcement practices, inadequate schools and a lack of public transportation are issues Detroit blacks face.
“Where we live should not determine whether we live or die,” he said.

Renowned civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson echoed their sentiments.

“I don’t want us to celebrate prematurely,” he said about progress made, most evident by the election of Barack Obama.

“The struggle continues… It is high noon in our politics and midnight in our economy.”

Jackson cited high unemployment and infant mortality rates and low life expectancy among African Americans as struggles left to overcome.

When factories are being shut down and homes foreclosed on in record numbers while the nation’s largest banks and richest executives are bailed out, Jackson said, civil disobedience becomes a necessity. He said workers and homeowners should not be afraid to refuse to leave factories or their homes.

He said progress and the 100-year milestone can not be used as an excuse to stop fighting.

“Let your voices be heard. Speak and speak out. Don’t be silent,” he said.

NAACP Timeline:

1909: Founded Feb. 12 in New York.

1913: Launches a protest after President Woodrow Wilson officially introduces segregation into the federal government.

1915: Organizes a national protest against “Birth of a Nation,” the racially inflammatory film by D.W. Griffith.

1917: Wins a battle to enable African Americans to be commissioned as officers in World War I. About 600 black officers are commissioned, and 700,000 African Americans register for the draft.

1918: Pressured by the NAACP, President Wilson makes a public statement against lynching.

1922: Places ads in major newspapers to present facts about lynching.

1930: Launches protest against Supreme Court Justice John Parker, who favored discriminatory laws.

1935: NAACP lawyers win battle to admit a black student into the University of Maryland.

1954: NAACP lawyers Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston win Brown vs. Board of Education, which outlawed segregation in schools.

1955: Member Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus.

1960: NAACP Youth Council starts nonviolent sit-ins at segregated lunch counters.

1963: NAACP’s first field director, Medgar Evers, is assassinated in front of his house in Jackson, Miss.

1964: Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places and employment.

1965: Registers more than 80,000 voters after Voting Rights Act is passed.

1982: Protests stop President Ronald Reagan from giving a tax break to the segregated Bob Jones University.

1985: Leads a huge anti-apartheid rally in New York.

1991: Launches a voter-registration campaign that yields a 76 percent turnout of black voters to defeat former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke’s run for the Senate.

2000: Organizes more than 50,000 in South Carolina to protest the flying of the Confederate flag at the Statehouse.

Source: NAACP, San Francisco Chronicle