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Stephen Gill Spottswood was a religious leader and civil rights activist known for his work as bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Stephen Gill Spottswood (July 18, 1897 – December 2, 1974)[1] was a religious leader and civil rights activist known for his work as bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) and chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).Bishop Spottswood's papers are currently archived at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University (not Dillard University).Early life and familySpottswood was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the only child of Mary Elizabeth and Abraham Lincoln Spottswood.[1][2] He attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and then Freeport High School in Maine. He went on to Albright College, earning a B.A. in history in 1917; Gordon Divinity School; and Yale Divinity School, where he earned his doctorate.[2][3]Religious leadershipShortly after finishing his undergraduate work, Spottswood was named assistant pastor of the First Evangelical United Brethren Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, followed soon after by an appointment with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ).[2] Between the time he received his Th.B. from Gordon in 1919 through 1936, he served in leadership positions at several churches around the country: First AMEZ Church of Lowell in Lowell, Massachusetts, which he also founded; Green Memorial AMEZ Church in Portland, Maine; Varick Memorial AMEZ Church in New Haven, Connecticut; Goler Memorial AMEZ Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Jones Tabernacle AMEZ Church in Indianapolis, Indiana; St. Luke AMEZ Church in Buffalo, New York; and John Wesley AMEZ Church in Washington, D.C.[1][2]While in Washington, in 1952, he was elected the 58th bishop of the AMEZ.[4] He also served in various episcopal districts around the country through the 1950s and 1960s.[2][3]E. Franklin Jackson and Stephen G. Spottswood representing the NAACP in a meeting with President John F. Kennedy at the White HouseCivil rights activism and involvement with NAACPSpottswood joined the NAACP in 1919 and was an active voice for racial equality throughout his adult life.[4] Though he would later play a more conventional leadership position, he also participated in a number of public protests, including sit-ins, boycotts, and pickets, believing that those activities which had economic impact were among the most effective for bringing about change.[2][4]He became president of the NAACP's Washington branch in 1947 and was elected to the national board of the NAACP in 1955, vice-president in 1959, and finally chairman in 1961, a post he held until 1975. He became well known for his harsh criticism of those opposing civil rights issues and of the Nixon administration in particular.[5]Keynote address at the 1970 NAACP conventionSpottswood earned a reputation as an outspoken critic of racial injustice and several times attracted press coverage for his political censures. At the 61st annual convention of the NAACP, held in Cincinnati in 1970, the 72-year-old Spottswood delivered a controversial and widely publicized keynote address covering a number of topics. He warned people not to trust segregationist Alabama governor and presidential candidate George Wallace, who had begun to speak of a more positive stance on racial issues.[6] He also condemned racism in law enforcement, stating that "killing black Americans has been the 20th-century pastime of our police".[1]His most prominent criticism was directed at Richard Nixon and his administration's treatment of African-Americans, calling it "anti-Negro".[7][8] Spottswood said it was "the first time since 1920 that the national Administration has made it a matter of calculated policy to work against the needs and aspirations of the largest minority of its citizens".[8][9] In particular, he criticized Nixon's cutting of various social programs related to housing, poverty, and equal opportunity, and accused Republicans of seeking to undermine the Voting Rights Act and desegregation of schools.[10] On Nixon's anti-busing stance, he said, "Nixon does not want to abolish busing for the 20 million children bused every day for educational and social purposes. He just wants to keep 2.7 million children from being bused for desegregation purposes".[6] He went on to declare that the NAACP, which had traditionally been viewed as nonpartisan, "considers itself in a state of war against President Nixon".[9][11][12]Following the convention, Spottswood drew "staunch support from the Negro press as a whole", according to The Crisis, which aggregated and republished many of the news pieces, while "there was division among the remainder of the press ranging from hearty approval to disparagement".[7] Presidential special counsel Leonard Garment responded to Spottswood's allegations about the Voting Rights Act and school desegregation, calling them "unfair and disheartening".[8][10][13] Fellow AMEZ bishop C. Eubank Tucker said Spottswood's accusations were "both unjustified and unwarranted" and went on to charge the NAACP with receiving funds from the National Democratic Party. The NAACP issued a statement denying Tucker's corruption accusation and speculated about legal remedy while pointing out his longtime "loyalty to the Republican Party".[14] Spottswood replied to Tucker by calling him a "falsifier", expressing he did not wish to call his associate a liar, and to his other critics he defended his "anti-Negro" statement, insisting it was "sustained by the record".[7][15]At the following year's convention, Spottswood used his keynote address to soften the NAACP's stance on Nixon, admitting that his administration "has taken certain steps and has announced policies in certain phases of the civil rights issue which have earned cautious and limited approval among black Americans",[16] who, he cautioned, should not "live in a vacuum as long as he's President".[9] His colleague Roy Wilkins had previously clarified that in the months following Spottswood's 1970 address, Nixon's policies had been "only 95 percent anti-black".[13]Personal lifeIn 1919 he married Viola Estelle Booker, whom he was with until her death in a fire in 1953.[1] They had one son and four daughters.[2][17] In 1969 he remarried to Mattie Brownita Johnson Elliott.[2]Spottswood retired from his position as bishop of AMEZ in 1972.[1] He died of cancer on December 2, 1974, at the age of 77.[17] After his death, his papers were donated to the Amistad Research Center at Dillard University.[18]Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of society and the state.Civil rights generally include ensuring peoples' physical and mental integrity, life, and safety; protection from discrimination on grounds such as sex, race, sexual orientation, national origin, color, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, social class, religion, and disability;[1][2][3] and individual rights such as privacy and the freedom of thought, speech, religion, press, assembly, and movement.Political rights include natural justice (procedural fairness) in law, such as the rights of the accused, including the right to a fair trial; due process; the right to seek redress or a legal remedy; and rights of participation in civil society and politics such as freedom of association, the right to assemble, the right to petition, the right of self-defense, and the right to vote.Civil and political rights form the original and main part of international human rights.[4] They comprise the first portion of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (with economic, social, and cultural rights comprising the second portion). The theory of three generations of human rights considers this group of rights to be "first-generation rights", and the theory of negative and positive rights considers them to be generally negative rights.HistoryThe phrase "civil rights" is a translation of Latin jus civis (right of the citizen). Roman citizens could be either free (libertas) or servile (servitus), but they all had rights in law.[5] After the Edict of Milan in 313, these rights included the freedom of religion; however, in 380, the Edict of Thessalonica required all subjects of the Roman Empire to profess Catholic Christianity.[6] Roman legal doctrine was lost during the Middle Ages, but claims of universal rights could still be made based on Christian doctrine. According to the leaders of Kett's Rebellion (1549), "all bond men may be made free, for God made all free with his precious blood-shedding."[7]In the 17th century, English common law judge Sir Edward Coke revived the idea of rights based on citizenship by arguing that Englishmen had historically enjoyed such rights. The Parliament of England adopted the English Bill of Rights in 1689. It was one of the influences drawn on by George Mason and James Madison when drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776. The Virginia declaration heavily influenced the U.S. Bill of Rights (1789).[8]The removal by legislation of a civil right constitutes a "civil disability". In early 19th century Britain, the phrase "civil rights" most commonly referred to the issue of such legal discrimination against Catholics. In the House of Commons support for civil rights was divided, with many politicians agreeing with the existing civil disabilities of Catholics. The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 restored their civil rights.[9]In the United States, the term civil rights has been associated with the civil rights movement (1954–1968), which fought against racism.[10]Protection of rightsT. H. Marshall notes that civil rights were among the first to be recognized and codified, followed later by political rights and still later by social rights. In many countries, they are constitutional rights and are included in a bill of rights or similar document. They are also defined in international human rights instruments, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.Civil and political rights need not be codified to be protected. However, most democracies worldwide do have formal written guarantees of civil and political rights. Civil rights are considered to be natural rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America that "a free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."The question of to whom civil and political rights apply is a subject of controversy. Although in many countries citizens have greater protections against infringement of rights than non-citizens, civil and political rights are generally considered to be universal rights that apply to all persons.According to political scientist Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr., analyzing the causes of and lack of protection from human rights abuses in the Global South should be focusing on the interactions of domestic and international factors—an important perspective that has usually been systematically neglected in the social science literature.[11]Other rightsCustom also plays a role. Implied or unenumerated rights are rights that courts may find to exist even though not expressly guaranteed by written law or custom; one example is the right to privacy in the United States, and the Ninth Amendment explicitly shows that there are other rights that are also protected.The United States Declaration of Independence states that people have unalienable rights including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". It is considered by some that the sole purpose of government is the protection of life, liberty and property.[12]Some thinkers have argued that the concepts of self-ownership and cognitive liberty affirm rights to choose the food one eats,[13][14] the medicine one takes,[15][16][17] and the habit one indulges.[18][19][20]Social movements for civil rightsMain article: Civil rights movementsSavka Dabčević-Kučar, Croatian Spring participant; Europe's first female prime ministerCivil rights guarantee equal protection under the law. When civil and political rights are not guaranteed to all as part of equal protection of laws, or when such guarantees exist on paper but are not respected in practice, opposition, legal action and even social unrest may ensue.Civil rights movements in the United States gathered steam by 1848 with such documents as the Declaration of Sentiment.[21][full citation needed] Consciously modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments became the founding document of the American women's movement, and it was adopted at the Seneca Falls Convention, July 19 and 20, 1848.[22][full citation needed]Worldwide, several political movements for equality before the law occurred between approximately 1950 and 1980. These movements had a legal and constitutional aspect, and resulted in much law-making at both national and international levels. They also had an activist side, particularly in situations where violations of rights were widespread. Movements with the proclaimed aim of securing observance of civil and political rights included:the civil rights movement in the United States, where rights of black citizens had been violated;the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, formed in 1967 following failures in this province of the United Kingdom to respect the Roman Catholic minority's rights; andmovements in many Communist countries, such as the Prague Spring and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and the uprisings in Hungary.Most civil rights movements relied on the technique of civil resistance, using nonviolent methods to achieve their aims.[23] In some countries, struggles for civil rights were accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest and even armed rebellion. While civil rights movements over the last sixty years have resulted in an extension of civil and political rights, the process was long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not achieve or fully achieve their objectives.Problems and analysisThis section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (January 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)Questions about civil and political rights have frequently emerged. For example, to what extent should the government intervene to protect individuals from infringement on their rights by other individuals, or from corporations—e.g., in what way should employment discrimination in the private sector be dealt with?Political theory deals with civil and political rights. Robert Nozick and John Rawls expressed competing visions in Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Other influential authors in the area include Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, and Jean Edward Smith.First-generation rightsFirst-generation rights, often called "blue" rights,[citation needed] deal essentially with liberty and participation in political life. They are fundamentally civil and political in nature, as well as strongly individualistic: They serve negatively to protect the individual from excesses of the state. First-generation rights include, among other things, freedom of speech, the right to a fair trial, (in some countries) the right to keep and bear arms, freedom of religion, freedom from discrimination, and voting rights. They were pioneered in the seventeenth and eighteenth-century during the Age of Enlightenment. Political theories associated with the English, American, and French revolutions were codified in the English Bill of Rights in 1689 (a restatement of Rights of Englishmen, some dating back to Magna Carta in 1215) and more fully in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in 1789 and the United States Bill of Rights in 1791.[24][25]They were enshrined at the global level and given status in international law first by Articles 3 to 21 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and later in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In Europe, they were enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights in 1953.Civil and political rights organizationsGlobe icon.The examples and perspective in this section deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. You may improve this section, discuss the issue on the talk page, or create a new section, as appropriate. (June 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)There are current organizations that exist to protect people's civil and political rights in case they are infringed upon. The ACLU, founded in 1920, is a well-known non-profit organization that helps to preserve freedom of speech and works to change policy.[26] Another organization is the NAACP, founded in 1909, which focuses on protecting the civil rights of minorities. The NRA is a civil rights group founded in 1871 that primarily focuses on protecting the right to bear arms. These organizations serve a variety of causes one being the AFL–CIO, which is America's union that represent the working-class people nationwide.[27]See alsoicon Law portalicon Politics portalicon Society portalCivicsCivil libertiesDiscriminationList of civil rights leadersPolitical equalityRepressionThe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)[a] is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey, and Ida B. Wells.[4][5] Over the years, leaders of the organization have included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins.Its mission in the 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination". National NAACP initiatives include political lobbying, publicity efforts, and litigation strategies developed by its legal team.[6] The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of black foreign refugees and questions of economic development.[7] Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the once common term colored people, referring to those with some African ancestry.[8]The NAACP bestows annual awards on African Americans in three categories: Image Awards are for achievements in the arts and media, Theatre Awards are for achievements in theatre and stage, and Spingarn Medals are for outstanding achievements of any kind. Its headquarters is in Baltimore, Maryland.[9]OrganizationThe NAACP is headquartered in Baltimore, with additional regional offices in New York, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, Texas, Colorado, and California.[10] Each regional office is responsible for coordinating the efforts of state conferences in that region. Local, youth, and college chapters organize activities for individual members.In the U.S., the NAACP is administered by a 64-member board led by a chairperson. The board elects one person as the president and one as the chief executive officer for the organization. Julian Bond, civil rights movement activist and former Georgia State Senator, was chairman until replaced in February 2010 by healthcare administrator Roslyn Brock.[11] For decades in the first half of the 20th century, the organization was effectively led by its executive secretary, who acted as chief operating officer. James Weldon Johnson and Walter F. White, who served in that role successively from 1920 to 1958, were much more widely known as NAACP leaders than were presidents during those years.[12]The organization has never had a woman president, except on a temporary basis, and there have been calls to name one.[by whom?] Lorraine C. Miller served as interim president after Benjamin Jealous stepped down. Maya Wiley was rumored to be in line for the position in 2013, but Cornell William Brooks was selected.[13][14]Departments within the NAACP govern areas of action. Local chapters are supported by the "Branch and Field Services" department and the "Youth and College" department. The "Legal" department focuses on court cases of broad application to minorities, such as systematic discrimination in employment, government, or education. The Washington, D.C., bureau is responsible for lobbying the U.S. government, and the Education Department works to improve public education at the local, state, and federal levels. The goal of the Health Division is to advance health care for minorities through public policy initiatives and education.[15]As of 2007, the NAACP had approximately 425,000 paying and non-paying members.[16]The NAACP's non-current records are housed at the Library of Congress, which has served as the organization's official repository since 1964. The records held there comprise approximately five million items spanning the NAACP's history from the time of its founding until 2003.[17] In 2011, the NAACP teamed with the digital repository ProQuest to digitize and host online the earlier portion of its archives, through 1972 – nearly two million pages of documents, from the national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country, which offer first-hand insight into the organization's work related to such crucial issues as lynching, school desegregation, and discrimination in all its aspects (in the military, the criminal justice system, employment, housing).[18][19]Predecessor: The Niagara MovementMain article: Niagara MovementThe Pan-American Exposition of 1901 in Buffalo, New York, featured many American innovations and achievements, but also included a disparaging caricature of slave life in the South as well as a depiction of life in Africa, called "Old Plantation" and "Darkest Africa", respectively.[20] A local African-American woman, Mary Talbert of Ohio, was appalled by the exhibit, as a similar one in Paris highlighted black achievements. She informed W. E. B. Du Bois of the situation, and a coalition began to form.[20]In 1905, a group of thirty-two prominent African-American leaders met to discuss the challenges facing African Americans and possible strategies and solutions. They were particularly concerned by the Southern states' disenfranchisement of blacks starting with Mississippi's passage of a new constitution in 1890. Through 1908, Southern legislatures, dominated by white Southern Democrats, ratified new constitutions and laws creating barriers to voter registration and more complex election rules. In practice, this and the Lily-white movement caused the exclusion of most blacks and many poor whites from the political system in southern states. Black voter registration and turnout dropped markedly in the South as a result of such legislation. Men who had been voting for thirty years in the South were told they did not "qualify" to register.[citation needed] White-dominated legislatures also passed segregation and Jim Crow laws.[21]Because hotels in the US were segregated, the men convened in Canada at the Erie Beach Hotel[22] on the Canadian side of the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Ontario. As a result, the group came to be known as the Niagara Movement. A year later, three non-African-Americans joined the group: journalist William English Walling, a wealthy socialist; and social workers Mary White Ovington and Henry Moskowitz. Moskowitz, who was Jewish, was then also Associate Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. They met in 1906 at Storer College, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and in 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts.[23]The fledgling group struggled for a time with limited resources and internal conflict and disbanded in 1910.[24] Seven of the members of the Niagara Movement joined the Board of Directors of the NAACP, founded in 1909.[23] Although both organizations shared membership and overlapped for a time, the Niagara Movement was a separate organization. Historically, it is considered to have had a more radical platform than the NAACP. The Niagara Movement was formed exclusively by African Americans. Four European Americans were among the founders of the NAACP, they included Mary White Ovington, Henry Moskowitz, William English Walling and Oswald Garrison Villard.[8]HistoryFormationFounders of the NAACP: Moorfield Storey, Mary White Ovington and W. E. B. Du BoisThe Race Riot of 1908 in Springfield, Illinois, the state capital and Abraham Lincoln's hometown, was a catalyst showing the urgent need for an effective civil rights organization in the U.S. In the decades around the turn of the century, the rate of lynchings of blacks, particularly men, was at an all-time high. Mary White Ovington, journalist William English Walling and Henry Moskowitz met in New York City in January 1909 to work on organizing for black civil rights.[25] They sent out solicitations for support to more than 60 prominent Americans, and set a meeting date for February 12, 1909. This was intended to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated enslaved African Americans. While the first large meeting did not occur until three months later, the February date is often cited as the organization's founding date.The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, by a larger group including African Americans W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald Grimké, Mary Church Terrell, and the previously named whites Henry Moskowitz, Mary White Ovington, William English Walling (the wealthy Socialist son of a former slave-holding family),[25][26] Florence Kelley, a social reformer and friend of Du Bois;[27] Oswald Garrison Villard, and Charles Edward Russell, a renowned muckraker and close friend of Walling. Russell helped plan the NAACP and had served as acting chairman of the National Negro Committee (1909), a forerunner to the NAACP.[28]On May 30, 1909, the Niagara Movement conference took place at New York City's Henry Street Settlement House; they created an organization of more than 40, identifying as the National Negro Committee.[29] Among other founding members were Lillian Wald, a nurse who had founded the Henry Street Settlement where the conference took place.Du Bois played a key role in organizing the event and presided over the proceedings. Also in attendance was Ida B. Wells-Barnett, an African-American journalist and anti-lynching crusader. Wells-Barnett addressed the conference on the history of lynching in the United States and called for action to publicize and prosecute such crimes.[30] The members chose the new organization's name to be the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and elected its first officers:[31]National President, Moorfield Storey, BostonChairman of the Executive Committee, William English WallingTreasurer, John E. Milholland a prominent New York RepublicanDisbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison VillardExecutive Secretary, Frances BlascoerDirector of Publicity and Research, W. E. B. Du Bois.The NAACP was incorporated a year later in 1911. The association's charter expressed its mission:To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, employment according to their ability, and complete equality before the law.[32]The larger conference resulted in a more diverse organization, where the leadership was predominantly white. Moorfield Storey, a white attorney from a Boston abolitionist family, served as the president of the NAACP from its founding to 1915. At its founding, the NAACP had one African American on its executive board, Du Bois. Storey was a long-time classical liberal and Grover Cleveland Democrat who advocated laissez-faire free markets, the gold standard, and anti-imperialism. Storey consistently and aggressively championed civil rights, not only for blacks but also for Native Americans and immigrants (he opposed immigration restrictions). Du Bois continued to play a pivotal leadership role in the organization, serving as editor of the association's magazine, The Crisis, which had a circulation of more than 30,000.[33]The Crisis was used both for news reporting and for publishing African-American poetry and literature. During the organization's campaigns against lynching, Du Bois encouraged the writing and performance of plays and other expressive literature about this issue.[34]The Jewish community contributed greatly to the NAACP's founding and continued financing.[35] Jewish historian Howard Sachar writes in his book A History of Jews in America that "In 1914, Professor Emeritus Joel Spingarn of Columbia University became chairman of the NAACP and recruited for its board such Jewish leaders as Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise."[35]Jim Crow and disenfranchisementAn African American drinks out of a segregated water cooler designated for "colored" patrons in 1939 at a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City.Sign for the "colored" waiting room at a bus station in Durham, North Carolina, 1940In its early years, the NAACP was based in New York City. It concentrated on litigation in efforts to overturn disenfranchisement of blacks, which had been established in every southern state by 1908, excluding most from the political system, and the Jim Crow statutes that legalized racial segregation.In 1913, the NAACP organized opposition to President Woodrow Wilson's introduction of racial segregation into federal government policy, workplaces, and hiring. African-American women's clubs were among the organizations that protested Wilson's changes, but the administration did not alter its assuagement of Southern cabinet members and the Southern bloc in Congress.By 1914, the group had 6,000 members and 50 branches. It was influential in winning the right of African Americans to serve as military officers in World War I. Six hundred African-American officers were commissioned and 700,000 men registered for the draft. The following year, the NAACP organized a nationwide protest, with marches in numerous cities, against D. W. Griffith's silent movie The Birth of a Nation, a film that glamorized the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, several cities refused to allow the film to open.[36]The NAACP began to lead lawsuits targeting disfranchisement and racial segregation early in its history. It played a significant part in the challenge of Guinn v. United States (1915) to Oklahoma's discriminatory grandfather clause, which effectively disenfranchised most black citizens while exempting many whites from certain voter registration requirements. It persuaded the Supreme Court of the United States to rule in Buchanan v. Warley in 1917 that state and local governments cannot officially segregate African Americans into separate residential districts. The Court's opinion reflected the jurisprudence of property rights and freedom of contract as embodied in the earlier precedent it established in Lochner v. New York. It also played a role in desegregating recreational activities via the historic Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. Michigan after plaintiff Sarah Elizabeth Ray was wrongfully discriminated against when attempting to board a ferry.In 1916, chairman Joel Spingarn invited James Weldon Johnson to serve as field secretary. Johnson was a former U.S. consul to Venezuela and a noted African-American scholar and columnist. Within four years, Johnson was instrumental in increasing the NAACP's membership from 9,000 to almost 90,000. In 1920, Johnson was elected head of the organization. Over the next ten years, the NAACP escalated its lobbying and litigation efforts, becoming internationally known for its advocacy of equal rights and equal protection for the "American Negro".[37]The NAACP devoted much of its energy during the interwar years to fight the lynching of blacks throughout the United States by working for legislation, lobbying, and educating the public. The organization sent its field secretary Walter F. White to Phillips County, Arkansas, in October 1919, to investigate the Elaine Race Riot. Roving white vigilantes killed more than 200 black tenant farmers and federal troops after a deputy sheriff's attack on a union meeting of sharecroppers left one white man dead. White published his report on the riot in the Chicago Daily News.[38] The NAACP organized the appeals for twelve black men sentenced to death a month later based on the fact that testimony used in their convictions was obtained by beatings and electric shocks. It gained a groundbreaking Supreme Court decision in Moore v. Dempsey 261 U.S. 86 (1923) that significantly expanded the Federal courts' oversight of the states' criminal justice systems in the years to come. White investigated eight race riots and 41 lynchings for the NAACP and directed its study Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States.[39]NAACP leaders Henry L. Moon, Roy Wilkins, Herbert Hill, and Thurgood Marshall in 1956The NAACP also worked for more than a decade seeking federal anti-lynching legislation, but the Solid South of white Democrats voted as a bloc against it or used the filibuster in the Senate to block passage. Because of disenfranchisement, African Americans in the South were unable to elect representatives of their choice to office. The NAACP regularly displayed a black flag stating "A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" from the window of its offices in New York to mark each lynching.[40]It organized the first of the two 1935 New York anti-lynching exhibitions in support of the Costigan-Wagner Bill, having previously widely published an account of the Lynching of Henry Lowry, as An American Lynching, in support of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill.In alliance with the American Federation of Labor, the NAACP led the successful fight to prevent the nomination of John Johnston Parker to the Supreme Court, based on his support for denying the vote to blacks and his anti-labor rulings. It organized legal support for the Scottsboro Boys. The NAACP lost most of the internecine battles with the Communist Party and International Labor Defense over the control of those cases and the legal strategy to be pursued in that case.The organization also brought litigation to challenge the "white primary" system in the South. Southern state Democratic parties had created white-only primaries as another way of barring blacks from the political process. Since the Democrats dominated southern states, the primaries were the only competitive contests. In 1944 in Smith v. Allwright, the Supreme Court ruled against the white primary. Although states had to retract legislation related to the white primaries, the legislatures soon came up with new methods to severely limit the franchise for blacks.During the Second Red Scare the NAACP was often linked to Communism by right-wing politicians. The House Un-American Activities Committee, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security, and security agencies sought to prove to the NAACP had been infiltrated by Communists. To distance themselves from these accusations, the NAACP purged suspected Communists from its membership, according to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's website.[41][42]Legal Defense FundThe board of directors of the NAACP created the Legal Defense Fund in 1939 specifically for tax purposes. It functioned as the NAACP legal department. Intimidated by the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, the Legal and Educational Defense Fund, Inc., became a separate legal entity in 1957, although it was clear that it was to operate in accordance with NAACP policy. After 1961 serious disputes emerged between the two organizations, creating considerable confusion in the eyes and minds of the public.[43]DesegregationNAACP representatives E. Franklin Jackson and Stephen Gill Spottswood meeting with President Kennedy at the White House in 1961By the 1940s, the federal courts were amenable to lawsuits regarding constitutional rights, against which Congressional action was virtually impossible. With the rise of private corporate litigators such as the NAACP to bear the expense, civil suits became the pattern in modern civil rights litigation,[44] and the public face of the Civil Rights Movement. The NAACP's Legal department, headed by Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall, undertook a campaign spanning several decades to bring about the reversal of the "separate but equal" doctrine announced by the Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.The NAACP's Baltimore chapter, under president Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson, challenged segregation in Maryland state professional schools by supporting the 1935 Murray v. Pearson case argued by Marshall. Houston's victory in Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada (1938) led to the formation of the Legal Defense Fund in 1939.Locals viewing the bomb-damaged home of Arthur Shores, NAACP attorney, Birmingham, Alabama, on September 5, 1963. The bomb exploded on September 4, the previous day, injuring Shores' wife.The campaign for desegregation culminated in a unanimous 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that held state-sponsored segregation of public elementary schools was unconstitutional. Bolstered by that victory, the NAACP pushed for full desegregation throughout the South.[45] NAACP activists were excited about the judicial strategy. Starting on December 5, 1955, NAACP activists, including Edgar Nixon, its local president, and Rosa Parks, who had served as the chapter's Secretary, helped organize a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. This was designed to protest segregation on the city's buses, two-thirds of whose riders were black. The boycott lasted 381 days.[46] In 1956 the South Carolina legislature created an anti-NAACP oath, and teachers who refused to take the oath lost their positions. After twenty-one Black teachers at the Elloree Training School refused to comply, White school officials dismissed them. Their dismissal led to Bryan v. Austin in 1957, which became an important civil rights case.[47] In Alabama, the state responded by effectively barring the NAACP from operating within its borders because of its refusal to divulge a list of its members. The NAACP feared members could be fired or face violent retaliation for their activities. Although the Supreme Court eventually overturned the state's action in NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958), the NAACP lost its leadership role in the Civil Rights Movement while it was barred from Alabama.New organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC, in 1957) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, in 1960) rose up with different approaches to activism. Rather than relying on litigation and legislation, these newer groups employed direct action and mass mobilization to advance the rights of African Americans. Roy Wilkins, NAACP's executive director, clashed repeatedly with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders over questions of strategy and leadership within the movement.The NAACP continued to use the Supreme Court's decision in Brown to press for desegregation of schools and public facilities throughout the country. Daisy Bates, president of its Arkansas state chapter, spearheaded the campaign by the Little Rock Nine to integrate the public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.[48]By the mid-1960s, the NAACP had regained some of its prominence in the Civil Rights Movement by pressing for civil rights legislation. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963. That fall, President John F. Kennedy sent a civil rights bill to Congress before he was assassinated.President Lyndon B. Johnson worked hard to persuade Congress to pass a civil rights bill aimed at ending racial discrimination in employment, education and public accommodations, and succeeded in gaining passage in July 1964. He followed that with passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which provided for protection of the franchise, with a role for federal oversight and administrators in places where voter turnout was historically low.Under its anti-desegregation director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's COINTELPRO program targeted civil rights groups, including the NAACP, for infiltration, disruption and discreditation.[49]Kivie Kaplan became NAACP President in 1966. After his death in 1975, scientist W. Montague Cobb took over until 1982. Roy Wilkins retired as executive director in 1977, and Benjamin Hooks, a lawyer and clergyman, was elected his successor.The 1990sIn the 1990s, the NAACP ran into debt. The dismissal of two leading officials further added to the picture of an organization in deep crisis. After such, Rupert Richardson began her term as president of the NAACP in 1992.In 1993, the NAACP's Board of Directors narrowly selected Reverend Benjamin Chavis over Reverend Jesse Jackson to fill the position of Executive Director. A controversial figure, Chavis was ousted eighteen months later by the same board. They accused him of using NAACP funds for an out-of-court settlement in a sexual harassment lawsuit.[50] Following the dismissal of Chavis, Myrlie Evers-Williams narrowly defeated NAACP chairperson William Gibson for president in 1995, after Gibson was accused of overspending and mismanagement of the organization's funds.In 1996, Congressman Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic Congressman from Maryland and former head of the Congressional Black Caucus, was named the organization's president. Three years later strained finances forced the organization to drastically cut its staff, from 250 in 1992 to 50.In the second half of the 1990s, the organization restored its finances, permitting the NAACP National Voter Fund to launch a major get-out-the-vote offensive in the 2000 U.S. presidential elections. 10.5 million African Americans cast their ballots in the election; this was one million more than four years before.[50] The NAACP's effort was credited by observers as playing a significant role in Democrat Al Gore's winning several states where the election was close, such as Pennsylvania and Michigan.[50]Lee Alcorn controversyDuring the 2000 presidential election, Lee Alcorn, president of the Dallas NAACP branch, criticized Al Gore's selection of Senator Joe Lieberman for his vice-presidential candidate because Lieberman was Jewish. On a gospel talk radio show on station KHVN, Alcorn stated, "If we get a Jew person, then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? Does it have anything to do with the failed peace talks? ... So I think we need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money and these kind of things."[51]NAACP President Kweisi Mfume immediately suspended Alcorn and condemned his remarks. Mfume stated,I strongly condemn those remarks. I find them to be repulsive, anti-Semitic, anti-NAACP and anti-American. Mr. Alcorn does not speak for the NAACP, its board, its staff or its membership. We are proud of our long-standing relationship with the Jewish community and I personally will not tolerate statements that run counter to the history and beliefs of the NAACP in that regard.[51]Alcorn, who had been suspended three times in the previous five years for misconduct, subsequently resigned from the NAACP. He founded what he called the Coalition for the Advancement of Civil Rights. Alcorn criticized the NAACP, saying, "I can't support the leadership of the NAACP. Large amounts of money are being given to them by large corporations with which I have a problem."[51] Alcorn also said, "I cannot be bought. For this reason I gladly offer my resignation and my membership to the NAACP because I cannot work under these constraints."[52]Alcorn's remarks were also condemned by Jesse Jackson, Jewish groups and George W. Bush's rival Republican presidential campaign. Jackson said he strongly supported Lieberman's addition to the Democratic ticket, saying, "When we live our faith, we live under the law. He [Lieberman] is a firewall of exemplary behavior."[51] Al Sharpton, another prominent African-American leader, said, "The appointment of Mr. Lieberman was to be welcomed as a positive step."[53] The leaders of the American Jewish Congress praised the NAACP for its quick response, stating that: "It will take more than one bigot like Alcorn to shake the sense of fellowship of American Jews with the NAACP and black America ... Our common concerns are too urgent, our history too long, our connection too sturdy, to let anything like this disturb our relationship."[54]George W. BushLouisiana NAACP leads Jena March 6In 2004, President George W. Bush declined an invitation to speak to the NAACP's national convention.[55] Bush's spokesperson said that Bush had declined the invitation to speak to the NAACP because of harsh statements about him by its leaders.[56] In an interview, Bush said, "I would describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically nonexistent. You've heard the rhetoric and the names they've called me."[56] Bush said he admired some members of the NAACP and would seek to work with them "in other ways".[56]On July 20, 2006, Bush addressed the NAACP national convention. He made a offer for increasing support by African Americans for Republicans, in the midst of a midterm election. He referred to Republican Party support for civil rights.[57][58]Tax exempt statusIn October 2004, the Internal Revenue Service informed the NAACP that it was investigating its tax-exempt status based on chairman Julian Bond's speech at its 2004 Convention, in which he criticized President George W. Bush as well as other political figures.[59][60] In general, the US Internal Revenue Code prohibits organizations granted tax-exempt status from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."[61] The NAACP denounced the investigation as retaliation for its success in increasing the number of African Americans who were voting.[59][62] In August 2006, the IRS investigation concluded with the agency's finding "that the remarks did not violate the group's tax-exempt status."[63]LGBT rightsAs the American LGBT rights movement gained steam after the Stonewall riots of 1969, the NAACP became increasingly affected by the movement to gain rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. While chairman of the NAACP, Bond became an outspoken supporter of the rights of gays and lesbians and stated his support for same-sex marriage. He boycotted the 2006 funeral services for Coretta Scott King, as he said the King children had chosen an anti-gay megachurch. This was in contradiction to their mother's longstanding support for the rights of gay and lesbian people.[64] In a 2005 speech in Richmond, Virginia, Bond said:African Americans ... were the only Americans who were enslaved for two centuries, but we were far from the only Americans suffering discrimination then and now. ... Sexual disposition parallels race. I was born this way. I have no choice. I wouldn't change it if I could. Sexuality is unchangeable.[65]In a 2007 speech on the Martin Luther King Day Celebration at Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia, Bond said, "If you don't like gay marriage, don't get gay married." His positions have pitted elements of the NAACP against religious groups in the civil rights movement who oppose gay marriage, mostly within the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The NAACP became increasingly vocal in opposition against state-level constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage and related rights. State NAACP leaders such as William J. Barber II of North Carolina participated actively against North Carolina Amendment 1 in 2012, but voters passed it.On May 19, 2012, the NAACP's board of directors formally endorsed same-sex marriage as a civil right, voting 62–2 for the policy in a Miami, Florida quarterly meeting.[66][67] Benjamin Jealous, the organization's president, said of the decision, "Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law. ... The NAACP's support for marriage equality is deeply rooted in the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution and equal protection of all people." Possibly significant in the NAACP's vote was its concern with the HIV/AIDS crisis in the black community; while AIDS support organizations recommend that people live a monogamous lifestyle, the government did not recognize same-sex relationships as part of this.[68] As a result of this endorsement, Keith Ratliff Sr. of Des Moines, Iowa, resigned from the NAACP board.[69]Travel warning regarding MissouriOn June 7, 2017, the NAACP issued a warning for African-American travelers to Missouri:Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION. Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri. Missouri, home of Lloyd Gaines, Dred Scott and the dubious distinction of the Missouri Compromise and one of the last states to lose its slaveholding past, may not be safe. ... [Missouri Senate Bill] SB 43 legalizes individual discrimination and harassment in Missouri and would prevent individuals from protecting themselves from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in Missouri.Moreover, over-zealous enforcement of routine traffic violations in Missouri against African Americans has resulted in an increasing trend that shows African Americans are 75% more likely to be stopped than Caucasians.[70]Missouri NAACP Conference president Rod Chapel Jr., suggested that visitors to Missouri "should have bail money."[71]CensorshipThe NAACP led protests of the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation.[72] In 2019 the NAACP called for a ban of all Dr. Seuss books from public schools and libraries citing discriminatory depictions of Blacks, Jews, Indigenous peoples, Muslims, and Asians.[73] In 2023 the group sued to block a book from being banned from school libraries.[74]Travel warning regarding FloridaIn May 2023 in response to new laws targeting people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and Equality Florida issued travel advisories for visitors to Florida.[75][76]Under its current Governor, the State of Florida has engaged in an all-out attack on Black Americans, accurate Black history, voting rights, members of the LGBTQ+community, immigrants, women's reproductive rights, and free speech, while simultaneously embracing a culture of fear, bullying, and intimidation by public officials. In his effort to rewrite American history to exclude the voices, contributions of African Americans and the challenges they overcame despite the systemic racism that African Americans have faced since first arriving in this country, Governor DeSantis has signed various controversial anti-civil rights measures into law; including the Combatting Violence, Disorder and Looting and Law Enforcement Protection Act Florida HB 1, Stop Wrongs against Our Kids and Employees Act ("Stop W.O.K.E. Act") Florida HB 7, Constitutional Carry Act Florida House HB 543, Florida Senate Bill 266, and Florida Senate Bill 7066.Local branch impactThis section relies largely or entirely on a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources.Find sources: "NAACP" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2020)[icon] This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2020)The organization's national initiatives, political lobbying, and publicity efforts were handled by the headquarters staff in New York and Washington, D.C. Court strategies were developed by the legal team based for many years at Howard University.[6][77][78]NAACP local branches have also been important. When, in its early years, the national office launched campaigns against The Birth of a Nation, it was the local branches that carried out the boycotts. When the organization fought to expose and outlaw lynching, the branches carried the campaign into hundreds of communities. And while the Legal Defense Fund developed a federal court strategy of legal challenges to segregation, many branches fought discrimination using state laws and local political opportunities, sometimes winning important victories.[6][79][80][81][82]Those victories were mostly achieved in Northern and Western states before World War II. When the Southern civil rights movement gained momentum in the 1940s and 1950s, credit went both to the Legal Defense Fund attorneys and to the massive network of local branches that Ella Baker and other organizers had spread across the region.[6]Local organizations built a culture of black political activism.[6]Current activitiesNAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous and former president Bill Clinton during the Medgar Evers wreath-laying ceremony in Arlington, June 5, 2013YouthYouth sections of the NAACP were established in 1936; there are now more than 600 groups with a total of more than 30,000 individuals in this category. The NAACP Youth & College Division is a branch of the NAACP in which youth are actively involved. The Youth Council is composed of hundreds of state, county, high school and college operations where youth (and college students) volunteer to share their opinions with their peers and address local and national issues. Sometimes volunteer work expands to a more international scale.Youth and College Division"The mission of the NAACP Youth & College Division shall be to inform youth of the problems affecting African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities; to advance the economic, education, social and political status of African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities and their harmonious cooperation with other peoples; to stimulate an appreciation of the African Diaspora and other African Americans' contribution to civilization; and to develop an intelligent, militant effective youth leadership."[83]ACT-SO programSince 1978, the NAACP has sponsored the Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO) program for high school youth around the United States. The program is designed to recognize and award African-American youth who demonstrate accomplishment in academics, technology, and the arts. Local chapters sponsor competitions in various categories for young people in grades 9–12. Winners of the local competitions are eligible to proceed to the national event at a convention held each summer at locations around the United States. Winners at the national competition receive national recognition, along with cash awards and various prizes.[84]Environmental justiceThe environmental justice group at NAACP has 11 full-time staff members. In April 2019, the NAACP published a report outlining the tactics used by the fossil fuel industry. The report claims that "Fossil fuel companies target the NAACP for manipulation and co-optation."[85] The NAACP has been concerned about the influence of utilities which have contributed massive amounts of money to NAACP chapters in return for chapter support of non-environmentally friendly goals of utilities. In response, the NAACP has been working with its chapters to encourage them to support environmentally sound policies.[86]HeadquartersOn June 29, 2020, WTOP-FM, a Washington, D.C. news radio station, reported that the NAACP intended to relocate its national headquarters from its longtime home in Baltimore to the Franklin D. Reeves Center of Municipal Affairs, a building owned by the Government of the District of Columbia,[87] located at U and 14th Streets in Northwest Washington, D.C.[88] Derrick Johnson, the NAACP's president and CEO, emphasized that the organization will be better able to engage in and influence change in D.C. than in Baltimore.[89]National conventionThe NAACP's national convention has been held annually in the following cities:1909: New York City1910: New York City1928: Los Angeles1929: Cleveland1954: Dallas1980: Miami Beach, Florida1981: Denver1982: Boston1983: New Orleans1984: Kansas City, Missouri1985: Dallas1986: Baltimore1987: New York City1988: Washington, D.C.1989: Detroit1990: Los Angeles1991: Houston1992: Nashville, Tennessee1993: Indianapolis1994: Chicago1995: Minneapolis1996: Charlotte, North Carolina1997: Pittsburgh1998: Atlanta1999: New York City2000: Baltimore2001: New Orleans2002: Houston2003: Miami2004: Philadelphia2005: Milwaukee2006: Washington, D.C.2007: Detroit2008: Cincinnati2009: New York City2010: Kansas City, Missouri2011: Los Angeles2012: Houston2013: Orlando, Florida2014: Baltimore2015: Philadelphia2016: Cincinnati2017: Baltimore2018: San Antonio2019: Detroit2020: Virtually2021: Virtually2022: Atlantic City, New Jersey2023: BostonAwardsNAACP Image Awards – honoring African-American achievements in film, television, music, and literatureNAACP Theatre Awards – honoring African-American achievements in theatre productionsSpingarn Medal – honoring general African-American achievementsDayton (OH) NAACP President Derrick L. Foward Receives Thalheimer Award for Programs in Atlantic City, New Jersey in July 2022Dayton (OH) NAACP President Derrick L. Foward Receives Thalheimer Award for Publications in Atlantic City, New Jersey in July 2022Thalheimer Award – for achievements by NAACP branches and chaptersMontague Cobb Award – honoring African-American achievements in the field of healthNathaniel Jones Award for Public Service – first awarded to public servants in 2018Foot Soldier In the Sands Award – awarded to attorneys who have contributed legal expertise to the NAACP on a pro bono basisJuanita Jackson Mitchell Award for Legal Activism – awarded to a NAACP unit for "exemplary legal redress committee activities"William Robert Ming Advocacy Award – awarded to lawyers who exemplify personal and financial sacrifice for human equalitySee alsoflag United States portalAlthea T. L. SimmonsCivil rights movement (1896–1954)Chicago Better Housing AssociationThe Crisis, official magazineNational Independent Political LeagueNAACP New Orleans BranchNAACP Theatre Award – President's AwardNiagara MovementThe African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or the AME Zion Church (AMEZ) is a historically African-American Christian denomination based in the United States. It was officially formed in 1821 in New York City, but operated for a number of years before then. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.[1]HistoryPart of a series onMethodismJohn WesleyJohn groupsOther relevant topicsChristianity • Protestantismicon Christianity portalvteThe origins of this church can be traced to the John Street Methodist Church of New York City. Following acts of overt discrimination in New York (such as black parishioners being forced to leave worship), many black Christians left to form their own churches. The first church founded by the AME Zion Church was built in 1800 and was named Zion; one of the founders was William Hamilton, a prominent orator and abolitionist. These early black churches still belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church denomination, although the congregations were independent. During the Great Awakening, the Methodists and Baptists had welcomed free blacks and slaves to their congregations and as preachers.The fledgling Zion church grew, and soon multiple churches developed from the original congregation. These churches were attended by black congregants, but ministered to by white ordained Methodist ministers. In 1820, six of these churches met to ordain James Varick as an elder, and in 1821 he was made the first General Superintendent of the AME Zion Church. A debate raged within the white-dominated Methodist church over accepting black ministers. This debate ended on July 30, 1822, when James Varick was ordained as the first bishop of the AME Zion church, a newly independent denomination. The total membership in 1866 was about 42,000.[2] Two years later, it claimed 164,000 members, as it sent missionaries to the South after the American Civil War to plant new churches with the newly emancipated freedmen.[3] The AME Zion Church had been part of the Abolitionist movement and became known as the 'Freedom Church', because it was associated with the period after emancipation of the slaves.Black churches were integral in helping build communities and develop leadership among the freedmen in the South. Later they played an increasingly powerful role in the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. The AME Zion Church remained smaller than the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) Church, a denomination started in Philadelphia in the early 19th century) because some of its ministers lacked the authority to perform marriages, and many of its ministers avoided political roles. Its finances were weak, and in general its leadership was not as strong as that of the AME Church. However, it was the leader among all Protestant denominations in ordaining women and giving them powerful roles in the church.[4]An influential leader bishop was James Walker Hood (1831–1918) of North Carolina. He not only created and fostered his network of AME Zion churches in North Carolina, but he also was the grand master for the entire South of the Prince Hall Freemasonry, a secular black fraternal organization that strengthened the political and economic forces inside the black community.[5] Hood Theological Seminary in Salisbury, North Carolina is named in this bishop's honor.[6]The Wesleyan-Holiness movement in Methodism came to the AME Zion Church, with Julia A. J. Foote among others preaching the doctrine of entire sanctification throughout pulpits of the connexion.[7][8] Foote was the first woman ordained as a deacon within the connexion in 1894 and "in 1899, was ordained—the second female elder in her denomination."[7]In 1924 Cameron Chesterfield Alleyne became the church's first resident bishop in Africa.[9]NotesThe AME Zion Church is not to be confused with the similarly named African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was officially formed in 1816 by Richard Allen and Daniel Coker in Philadelphia. The denomination was made up of AME churches in the Philadelphia region, including Delaware and New Jersey. Though the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was founded to grant equal rights to African Americans in Methodist Christianity, its church membership is composed of people of all racial backgrounds.[10]Key features and early structure of AME Zion ChurchJohn Wesley AME Zion Church (est. 1847), located in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.The newly formed AME Zion Church had a separate meeting place and time apart from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Autonomy was key for the newly formed church.A general conference is the supreme administrative body of the church (s. 1988). Between meetings of the conference, the church is administered by the Board of Bishops. "The Book of Discipline is the instrument for setting forth the laws, plan, polity, and process by which the AME Zion Church governs itself."[11]Today the denomination operates Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina, and two junior colleges. In 1906 the religious studies department of Livingstone College was renamed Hood Theological Seminary, in honor of the influential bishop. Hood remained a department of the College until 2001.On July 1, 2001, the Seminary began operating independently of the College, and in March 2002, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), the College's accrediting agency, acknowledged that the Seminary was a separate institution, sponsored by the AME Zion Church independently of the College.[citation needed]The AME Zion missionaries are active in North and South America, Africa, and the Caribbean region (s. 1988). In 1998, the AME Zion Church commissioned the Reverend Dwight B. and BeLinda P. Cannon as the first family missionaries to South Africa in recent memory. These modern-day missionaries served from 1997 through 2004. Dr. Cannon was Administrative Assistant to the late Bishop Richard K. Thompson, who oversaw the work of South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland.[citation needed]The AME Zion Church has performed mission work in the countries of Nigeria, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, and Ghana in Africa; England, India, and Jamaica, St. Croix-Virgin Islands, Trinidad, and Tobago in the Caribbean; and others.[citation needed]The church todayThe church grew rapidly with the ordination of black ministers, but was mostly confined to the northern United States until the conclusion of the American Civil War. In the first decade after the war, together with the AME Church, it sent missionaries to the South to aid freedmen. The two African-American denominations gained hundreds of thousands of new members in the South, who responded to their missionaries and organizing efforts.[12] Today, the AME Zion Church has more than 1.4 million members,[13] with outreach activities in many areas around the world. Greater Centennial AME Zion Church in Mount Vernon, New York, and Simon Temple AME Zion Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, are two of the largest churches in the AME Zion denomination, both with over 3,000 members each. Staying true to their name, "The Freedom Church", for the first time in the history of the denomination, in 2016 national Christian television network, The Word Network, featured the AME Zion Church for a two-hour special in response to the massive killings of African Americans, which was led by Rev. Daren Jaime, Rev. Edwrin Sutton, Rev. Brian R. Thompson, and Rev. Dr. Stephen W. Pogue. The AME Zion Church continues to preach truth to power. In this generation an individual member is sometimes referred to as being a "Zion Methodist".[14]The AME Zion Church has been in negotiations for many years to merge with the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) into a tentatively named Christian Methodist Episcopal Zion Church with more than 2 million members. The plan was originally for unification by 2004.[15] The AME Zion church is very similar in doctrine and practice to the CME Church and the AME Church.EcumenismIn May 2012, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church entered into full communion with the United Methodist Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Union Methodist Protestant Church, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, and Union American Methodist Episcopal Church, in which these churches agreed to "recognize each other's churches, share sacraments, and affirm their clergy and ministries."[16]Notable clergy and membersBishop John Wesley Alstork[17]Bishop George Lincoln Blackwell[18]Marie L. Clinton[19]John C. Dancy[18]Eliza Ann Gardner[20]Bishop Mildred "Bonnie" Hines[21]Bishop James Walker Hood[18]Bishop Singleton T. Jones[18]Henry Moxley[22]Bishop Stephen Gill Spottswood[23]Harriet Tubman[18]Bishop Alexander Walters[18]See alsoicon Christianity portalflag United States portalAfrican Methodist Episcopal ChurchBlack churchChristian Methodist Episcopal ChurchChristianity in the United StatesChurches Uniting in ChristMethodist Episcopal Church, SouthMethodist Episcopal ChurchReligion of Black AmericansUnited Methodist ChurchWesleyan theologyThe Amistad Research Center (ARC) is an independent archives and manuscripts repository in the United States that specializes in the history of African Americans and ethnic minorities.[1][2] It is one of the first institutions of its kind in the United States to collect African American ethnic historical records and to document the modern Civil Rights Movement.[3]The ARC has approximately 15 million holdings, emphasizing documents, and also including books, pamphlets, periodicals, photographs, and fine arts.[4] It additionally has digitized holdings to enable research and education by scholars and students at locations distant from the ARC. Although the ARC documents history and race relations in the United States its holdings extend beyond African-American history and also include the ethnic heritage of Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Appalachian whites, and the LGBTQ community.[4]Early historyFisk UniversityClifton H. Johnsonfounding directorThe ARC traces its history to the events leading to the 1841 U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. The Amistad. The abolitionists who aided the Amistad Africans in their defense in that court case eventually helped to found the American Missionary Association (AMA), as an anti-caste, integrated abolitionist group.[5] During and following the United States Civil War, the AMA founded hundreds of schools for the freedmen and other ethnic communities across the United States, including common schools, colleges and universities.[5][6]The AMA became a division within the Board of Home Missions of the Congregational Churches following a 1927 merger.[7] It continued to work toward causes of civil rights, race relations, and the educational work of the church throughout the mergers of the Congregation, Christian, Evangelical and Reformed churches that occurred in 1931 and in 1956.[8] It eventually fell under the umbrella of the United Church Boards of Homeland Ministries (UCBHM) of the United Church of Christ (UCC).[7] As the AMA division's awareness of the problems of discrimination and segregation of African-Americans became evident, a two-day seminar on "racialism" was held at the Broadway Tabernacle Church in New York City in October 1941.[9] The seminar was attended by AMA officers, presidents of the historically black colleges and universities, representatives of philanthropic organizations, and U.S. government officials.[9] The results of the seminar was the establishment of the Race Relations Department of the UCBHM at Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee in 1942.[9] The Amistad Research Center was established within the Race Relations Department to house the historical records of the American Missionary Association in 1966.[10]Clifton H. Johnson was appointed as director of the Race Relations Department in 1966 making him the ARC's first administrator.[11] Johnson was a suitable choice for the ARC because of his experience with the AMA archives.[2] He wrote his dissertation on the AMA while a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina, organized the AMA archives, and initiated a proposal to the AMA suggesting that they use their archives as a nucleus to collect primary documents on the history of ethnic minorities in the United States.[11] Johnson's initial intent for Amistad Research Center was that it would supply primary resources for scholars interested in any aspect of African American history. The UCBHM eventually closed the Race Relations Department but chose to keep the ARC and it was incorporated into an independent non-profit archive in 1969.[10]: 4 Dillard UniversityAfter incorporation in 1969, the first meeting of the ARC's board members was held in the New York City office of the AMA.[10]: 30–31 Dr. Albert W. Dent, retired president of Dillard University, approached Johnson, with an open invitation from Dr. T.S. Lawless, chairman of the university's board of trustees, about moving the ARC to the campus of Dillard University. In 1970 the ARC moved to Dillard University. The university housed the ARC free of charge in its library with a promise to donate land for the construction of a permanent home on its campus. The funds for a new building at Dillard never crystallized and the Center was forced to seek a new location to house its collections that had grown beyond the space it occupied in Dillard's Library.[10]: 30–31 New Orleans MintThe Amistad Research Center moved to the New Orleans Mint in 1980 after its collection became too large for its space at Dillard University.[12] The United States government had given the Old U.S. Mint building to the State of Louisiana, which in turn had given it to the Louisiana State Museum. Johnson reached agreement with the director of the museum about re-locating the ARC to the Old U.S. Mint building. The terms including renting the floor space to the ARC for $1 per year.[13] The ARC spent $500,000 on renovations to the new space, anticipating that the Old U.S. Mint building could accommodate its collections for the next 15 years. Johnson underestimated the growth of the ARC's collections, and after five years the ARC ran out of space again. Johnson and the ARC's Board of Trustees searched for another location that would accommodate the institution in its continued growth.[10]: 31 Tulane UniversityBy the mid-1980s, the ARC was in need of adequate space and invitations came from various universities to house the ARC.[14] Harvard University, Rutgers University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Georgia, Howard University, Hampton University, the University of Mississippi, Tulane University and Prairie View A&M sent delegations to make presentations to the ARC's board. There was strong opposition to both Mississippi and Tulane housing the Center because of their past histories of denying Black students admission to their schools. However, there was strong support from the local community to keep the Center in New Orleans.[2] The local chapter of the Friends of Amistad collected hundreds of signatures from Black residents in favor of Tulane. Rosa Keller, Tulane University President Eamon Kelly, the Tulane University Board of Administrators, and New Orleans Mayor Ernest Morial advocated for the ARC to be located at Tulane University. The board voted to relocate to Tulane University, and the ARC has been on its campus in Uptown New Orleans since 1987.[10]: 33–35 In 1996, Donald DeVore became the first African-American to serve as director of the ARC and the third director in its history.[15]HoldingsArchives and manuscripts collectionCorrespondence from the Amistad captives to John Quincy AdamsThe Slave Narrative of James MarsThe ARC has approximately 800 manuscript collections that document cultural movements, civil rights, race relations, education, politics, and art.[4] It has 250,000 photographs dating from 1860 in various formats including tintypes and glass plate negatives. Microfilm holdings of collections at the ARC and from other repositories total approximately 14,000 reels. The moving image and sound recordings holdings include nearly 8,000 items on video and audiotape, motion picture film, phonographic and optical discs. Featured within the collections are oral histories with civil rights activists, community leaders, artists, and musicians. The Center also has archival materials related to W.E.B. DuBois, Mary McLeod Bethune, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, Homer Plessy, Frederick Douglass and Claude McKay.[4]Archival and manuscript holdings include the papers and records of:[4]American Committee on AfricaAmerican Home Missionary SocietyAmerican Missionary AssociationLarry Bagneris Jr.Richmond BarthéCarol BriceAnne Wiggins BrownElizabeth CatlettCountee CullenThomas DentFree Southern TheaterFannie Lou HamerChester HimesEllis Marsalis Jr.Ernest MorialMarc MorialJohn O'NealOperation Crossroads AfricaA.P. TureaudWilliam WarfieldCamilla WilliamsMarian Hamilton SpottsHale WoodruffLibrary collectionThe ARC's library serves as a complement to the manuscripts collection and serves to document the ethnic experience in the United States by housing pamphlets, broadsides, reports, literary first and notable editions, newspapers and monographs related to its focus. The ARC contains a diverse collection of approximately 45,000 books including rare and first editions, more than 2,000 runs of periodicals dating from 1826, 1.5 million newspaper articles, and 30,000 pamphlets.[16][17]In addition to significant holdings in the area of African American literature, Amistad holds works from the personal libraries of authors Countee Cullen, Chester Himes, and Thomas Dent and a Comics and Graphic Novels Collection, in addition to a growing collection of zines. Of significance to the Amistad Case, the ARC's collections include Lewis Tappan's bound volume of contemporary pamphlets on the legal proceedings with his handwritten notes. Other highlights include 18th century slave ordinances in French Louisiana, an edition of Black Majesty by John W. Handercock with an unpublished handwritten poem titled "Black Majesty" by Countee Cullen on the title page verso, and Lewis Tappan's annotated copy of the 1839 edition of American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses by Theodore Dwight Weld.[18]Art collectionThe Laundress, by Henry Ossawa TannerThe ARC owns a significant collection of African American art consisting of approximately 400 works. Many of the artworks were a part of the collection formed by the William E. Harmon Foundation and include examples from the growing African American visual arts movement of the mid-twentieth century. The works fall within the traditional fine art categories of portraiture, landscape, and genre.[19] Many of these are available in digital form.[20]Because of space limitations, the ARC's artworks are often displayed at major museums,[21] including the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the DuSable Museum of African American History, El Museo del Barrio, and the Perez Art Museum Miami.Among the prominent works in the collection are the 41 paintings in the Toussaint L'Ouverture series,[20] completed in 1938 by Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), a celebrated American artist of the 20th century. Toussaint was Lawrence's first series, completed when he was a 21 years old student. The paintings document the historic events of the Haitian Revolution.Ellis Wilson's oil painting entitled Funeral Procession is a collection highlight, especially since it was the subject of an episode of a popular television show in the 1980s.[22]The ARC's art holdings include works from[23]Edward Mitchell BannisterRichmond BarthéRomare BeardenMargaret BurroughsElizabeth CatlettClaude ClarkAaron DouglasDavid DriskellWilliam JohnsonJacob LawrenceRichard Bruce NugentWilliam Edouard ScottHenry Ossawa TannerEllis WilsonHale WoodruffBishop Stephen Gill Spottswood, board chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and a retired spiritual leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, died Sunday night of cancer at his home in Washington. He was 77 years old.As chairman of the country's oldest and largest civil rights organization since 1961, Bishop Spottswood was known as a moderate in an era of militancy, a voice of reason when the cause of black Americans was assuming an increasingly strident tone in the nineteensixties.But for more than half a cenfury, he had boomed a gospel of freedom from the pulpit, and had walked picket lines, mounted boycotts and raised banners of protest long before civil rights became a major national issue.“You think militancy began in the sixties?” he told an interviewer several years ago. “A clenched fist and a few slogans is all that is new. We had sitins and picketing in the twenties.”ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHis personal philosophy grew From the deep‐felt conviction that economic betterment and a secure standard of living meant freedom and dignity. And he‐strove to educate white America to the need for recognizing the Negro as an equal and true partner in American society.Though he preferred economic boycotts to freedom rides and quiet moral suasion to noisrprotests, Bishop Spottswood startled the nation in 1970 by branding the Nixon Administration as anti‐Negro.Citingg, the Supreme Court nominations of Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. and G. Harrold Carswell; Daniel P. Moynihan's call for a policy of “benign neglect” for blacks, and retreats from school and other desegregation efforts, Bishop Spottswood told an N.A.A.C.P. convention:“This is the first time since 1920 that the national Administration has made it a matter bf calculated policy to work against the needs and aspirations of the largest minority of its citizens.”Tall, Husky, and ErectThe White House issued embarrassed denials, and President Nixon was reported by his press aides to have been stunned by the accusation. A year later, Bishop Spottswood softened his assessment of the Nixon Administration, saying it had taken some steps progressive for blacks. But many civil rights leaders did not agree.In recent years, despite age end illness, Bishop Spottswood continued to be active in the eadership of the N.A.A.C.P., lefending its basic principles of integration despite growing lissension within the 400,000‐member organization, where there is a strong activist setiment.Editors’ PicksThe Puzzle Personality QuizTMI, Apple Watch! Why You Don’t Really Need All That Data.Shane Gillis Finally Appears on ‘Saturday Night Live’SKIP ADVERTISEMENTADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENTIn May, 1972, he retired as one of 15 bishops of the A.M.F. Zion Church, a post he had held for 20 years, with jurisdiction over 300 churches in a dozen states. From 1936 to 1952, he was the pastor of the John Wesley National A.M.E. Zion Church in Washington.A tall, husky and erect figure with graying hair and a mustache, Bishop Spottswood was known to friends as an affable man, serene at times with his brier pipe but dynamic when, as in the pulpit, his deep firm voice mounted with emotion to press his message.Bishop Spottswood was born in Boston on July 18, 1897, the only child of Abraham Lincoln Spottswood, a porter, and the former Mary Elizabeth Gray. He grew up in a religious atmosphere, attending public schools in Boston. He received a bachelor's degree from Albright College in Reading, Pa., in 1917, and a theological degree in 1919 from the Gordon College of Theology in Boston.That year he was ordained in the A.M.E. Zion Church and joined the N.A.A.C.P., beginning his parallel careers as a clergyman and civil rights activist. He served as pastor of churches in Maine, Connecticut, North Carolina, Indiana and New York during the next 16 years before moving to Washington to assume duties at the John Wesley Church.Throughout these years, Bishop Spottswood took part in sit‐ins, boycotts and picketing demonstrations in many cities. After almost four decades of field work, he was elected to the N.A.A.C.P. board of directors in 1955 and became chairman six years later.On this date, in 1897, Stephen Gill Spottswood was born. He was a Black Bishop, religious leader, and civil and human rights activist.He was from Boston, where he attended Albright College and Gordon Divinity School, and then received a Doctor of Divinity from Yale University. Bishop Spottswood was president of the Ohio Council of Churches and served on the boards of numerous interfaith conferences. He joined the NAACP in 1919 and was appointed to their board in 1955. He was elected Chairman of the Board in 1961 and held that position for ten years.As head of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, he became the center of a political storm in 1971 when he publicly chastised the Nixon administration for its treatment of blacks. Although under extreme pressure from the administration, he refused to retract his statement. Stephen Spottswood died on December 1, 1974.Stephen Gill Spottswood Edit Profileactivist clergymanStephen Gill Spottswood was an American Methodist Episcopal clergyman and civil rights leader. He is mostly noted for his work as bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AMEZ) and chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).BackgroundStephen was born on July 18, 1897 in Boston, Massachussets, United States, the only child of Abraham Lincoln Spottswood, a porter, and Mary Elizabeth Gray.EducationHe attended public schools in Boston; in 1917, he received a B. A. degree from Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, and in 1919 a Th. D. degree from the Gordon School of Theology in Boston. During the 1923-1924 academic year he did graduate study at the Yale Divinity School.CareerIn 1917 and 1918, Spottswood had served as an assistant professor of churches in Cambridge and Boston, Massachussets, respectively, and in 1919 was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.Spottswood became active in civil rights causes early in his ministerial career, long before civil rights became a national issue. He joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1919, and soon thereafter participated in a Washington protest against opponents of federal antilynching legislation.In 1922 he engaged in sit-ins to desegregate a motion picture theater in New Haven, Connecticut, and during the 1930's he took part in sit-ins and picketing against racial discrimination in Buffalo, New York. During his pastorate in Washington he became a founder of the Committee for Racial Democracy in the nation's capital, and in 1946 was elected president of the District of Columbia branch of the NAACP.On May 17, 1952, Spottswood was elected fifty-eighth bishop of the A. M. E. Zion Church, giving him religious jurisdiction over several hundred churches and varied denominational programs in different regions of the United States and Guyana. As bishop he supervised a comprehensive restructuring of the budget operations of the A. M. E. Zion Church, sponsored the construction of new churches, and promoted housing and community development.He served as president of the Ohio Council of Churches and represented his denomination on the Executive Committee of the World Methodist Council and the General Board of the National Council of Churches. He retired on May 10, 1972.In 1954 Spottswood was elected a member of the NAACP Board of Directors and in 1961 became its chairman, succeeding Robert C. Weaver, the distinguished economist. As board chairman he worked closely with the NAACP's executive director, Roy Wilkins. They met with President John F. Kennedy in July 1961 to urge his support of stronger civil rights legislation. This was in the wake of recent violence and legal harassment directed against blacks and whites participating in sit-ins and "freedom rides" in the southern states.In 1964, Spottswood called for federal government intervention to deal with the murder of civil rights workers in Mississippi, and in 1965, to protect voting rights demonstrators in Alabama.At the 1970 meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, he startled the delegates, as well as the press and the general public, with the accusation that the administration of President Richard Nixon was "anti-Negro" and had a "calculated policy to work against the needs and aspirations of the largest minority of its citizens. " He cited the administration's retreat on school desegregation, the nomination of conservative southerners to the Supreme Court, and the apparent approval of a policy of benign neglect for black Americans proposed by presidential adviser Daniel P. Moynihan.Hence became a vigorous and effective spokesman for the NAACP during the 1970's, when the organization's goals and strategies were increasingly challenged by the strident voices and tactics of black power activists.Spottswood died on December 1, 1974 at his home in Washington, District of Columbia.AchievementsStephen Gill Spottswood's pastorate was notable in Washington, where under his leadership the membership of John Wesley A. M. E. Zion church increased from 300 to more than 3, 000, and the church was designated the National Church of Zion Methodism. For more than half a century he had preached from the pulpit and public platform a gospel of freedom and equality. He gave valiant and effective leadership to the nation's largest civil rights organization during some of its greatest challenges.PoliticsDuring his pastorate in Washington he became a founder of the Committee for Racial Democracy in the nation's capital, and in 1946 was elected president of the District of Columbia branch of the NAACP.ViewsHe mixed activism with pragmatism in his struggles against race discrimination.His views favoring racial integration were eventually approved by most black Americans.PersonalityTall, erect, and robust, with graying hair, Spottswood was a distinguished-looking person. He was affable, restrained, and thoughtful, and did not lightly hurl accusations. Nevertheless, his deep, firm voice could fill with emotion to present a forceful message.ConnectionsOn June 10, 1919, Spottswood married Viola Estelle Booker, a milliner. They had five children; one son, Stephen Paul, became an A. M. E. Zion minister. Viola died on October 24, 1953, in a heroic effort to rescue a grandchild during a household fire. On December 15, 1969, Spottswood married Mattie Johnson Elliott, a former public school principal, in Washington, District of Columbia.Spouse:Mattie Johnson ElliottSpouse:Viola Estelle BookerSon:Stephen Paul Spottswood
Bishop Stephen Gill Spottswood
naacp cilvil rights ishop stephen gill spottswood award african american WOW $500.00
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