100 years ago, the NAACP began in Springfield
The bookends of the NAACP's century testify to the changes it has wrought.
In 1908, a deadly race riot in Springfield led to the birth of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In 2008, Barack Obama, who launched his campaign just blocks from that Springfield riot, became the first black president.
In between, the NAACP demanded America provide liberty and justice not only for blacks, but for all. Now its achievements have created a daunting modern challenge as the NAACP turned 100 Thursday: convincing people that the struggle continues.
"When I was in college, I could see signs that said 'white' and 'colored.' ... That was an easy target for me," says Julian Bond, NAACP board chairman. "Today ... I know these divisions still exist ... and it's more difficult to convince people that there's a problem."
NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous says his greatest obstacle is "the lack of outrage about the ways that young people and working people are routinely mistreated."
He cites figures like a 70 percent unsolved murder rate in some black communities, far lower high school graduation rates for blacks than whites and studies showing whites with criminal records get jobs easier than blacks with clean histories.
No group did more to pave the way for Obama's ascension, historians say, pointing to the NAACP's role in three main civil rights victories: the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation ruling, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
But now, a new era has clearly begun.
"We've got to rise to the occasion today," says former NAACP chairwoman Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain civil rights icon Medgar Evers. "We cannot continue to sing 'We Shall Overcome.' It's a dear, valued, valuable song that expresses a time that should live with us. But I want a new song."
After the Springfield riots, the NAACP was formed on Abraham Lincoln's 100th birthday, evolving out of the Niagara Movement, a 1905 conference of prominent blacks led by the scholar W.E.B. DuBois.
In 1917, the NAACP won its first Supreme Court ruling, that states could not racially segregate housing district.
Legal victories laid a foundation for other groups like women, the disabled and the elderly to demand equal protection.
The gains of the 1960s marked the end of an era. The group's major achievements since, according to its Web site, included helping keep ex-Klansman David Duke out of the U.S. Senate; registering hundreds of thousands of voters; leading marches; and pushing diversity in corporations and on TV.
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