The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People celebrated 100 years of demanding liberty and justice for all Americans. One local woman has been a major part of the Williamson chapter’s fruition.

The NAACP was formed in 1909 after a race riot in Springfield, Ill., left at least seven people dead. In 2008, the country watched as Barack Obama, who had launched his campaign from where Springfield’s blood was spilled, became the first African-American president.

Williamson resident Zada Stowe Hairston will soon be 90-years-old and recalls when the local chapter was being organized in 1946. Hairston had just arrived in Williamson after marrying the late Elbert Hairston. The local chapter was chartered in 1947. Together, the couple was involved in the establishment of the organization.

Hairston attended segregated schools in a one-room school house in North Carolina. She remembers traveling to school and church by horse and buggy. During the 1950s and 1960s, she said local businesses, schools and the hospital were all segregated. She recalls the bus boycott in 1955 which led to a United States Supreme Court decision that declared the Alabama and Montgomery laws requiring segregated buses unconstitutional.

A mother of seven, Hairston’s three oldest children was a part of the integration of local schools.

“Things were rather rough at first, but conditions and relationship improved over time,” she said. “The NAACP under the leadership of Dr. H. D. Clarke gave support to the family and all families during these years who were actively involved in the integration of the schools, etc. The local church and ministers played a major role in encouraging peace.”

Hairston’s daughter, Willene H. Moore, secretary of the Williamson branch of the NAACP said their mission is to “ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.” 

“As evidenced by our participation over the years with the NAACP, we believe in the organization, its mission, its vision, and are committed to do what we can as we work with others to bring about the realization of the principles, goals and objectives of the NAACP,” Moore said of her participation as well as her mother’s with the NAACP throughout the years. “The both of us feel that the Williamson Branch of the NAACP has made a significant difference, has been influential in advocating for freedom and equal rights for African-Americans of our community and the surrounding areas.  And not only for African-Americans, but for others who might have come before the organization requesting its services, as well.”

Moore said that though the dynamics of the times are improved, ‘as evidenced in the recent election and inauguration of our first African-American president of these United States, 

Barack Obama, we are far from realizing the full measure of this vision.”

“It will take time and the commitment of many Americans for it to come to fruition,” she stated. “Let everyone of us hang in there in this fight for ‘freedom and justice for all.’ Let us further march on till victory is won.”

Hairston encourages the youth of today. She tells them “everyone is born for a purpose. You are not born to just be born.”

“You need to get an education,” Hairston advises. “Go to school. First thing you got to do is make a living, help yourself, and then you can be of help to somebody else. But you can’t do that if you don’t go to school.”

Hairston has served as treasurer under several presidents, Rev. Frank Jones, Richard Wright, Rev. G. C. Childress, Rev. Gerald Dotson and John W. Fullen, current president who was elected for a second term of office. She also is a member of the program committee of the local branch.

Mother and daughter are proud to have seen the country come so far with the election of Obama.

“We are all God’s children,” Hairston said. “We need each other and could not have made it and will not make it without each other. We pray for our President, Barack Obama, as he has a very difficult job and road ahead of him. But I feel that he can make a great difference, with the support of the nation, in helping America to become all that she can be. We have hope for a better and brighter tomorrow. We pray for the prosperity of these United States.”

Sixty Americans came together in New York on Feb. 12, 1909 and signed a declaration called “The Call”. This date was chosen because it was Abraham Lincoln’s 100th birthday and the group felt that the day “should be one of taking stock of the nation’s progress since 1865 when slavery was abolished.”

The NAACP has played a major role in the change of the country from Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, to the passage of major civil rights laws that ended legal segregation in the South.

Benjamin Todd Jealous, the new president and CEO of the NAACP, says his greatest obstacle is “the lack of outrage about the ways that young people and working people are routinely mistreated.”

He points to figures of “70 percent unsolved murder rate in some black communities, blacks graduating from high school at a far lower rate than whites, and studies showing that whites with criminal records get jobs easier than blacks with clean histories.”

“There are issues of basic fairness, obstacles to opportunity, that still exist,” Jealous says. “The NAACP is needed now as urgently as it has ever been.”

 

TIMELINE:

1909

On February 12th The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded by a multiracial group of activists, who answered “The Call,” in the New York City, NY. They initially called themselves the National Negro Committee.

FOUNDERS Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling led the “Call” to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty.

1910

In the face of intense adversity, the NAACP begins its legacy of fighting legal battles addressing social injustice with the Pink Franklin case, which involved a Black farmhand, who unbeknowingly killed a policeman in self-defense when the officer broke into his home at 3 a.m. to arrest him on a civil charge. After losing at the Supreme Court, the following year the renowned NAACP official Joel Spingarn and his brother Arthur start a concerted effort to fight such cases.

1913

President Woodrow Wilson officially introduces segregation into the Federal Government. Horrified that President would sanction such a policy, the NAACP launched a public protest.

1915

The NAACP organizes a nationwide protest D.W. Griffiths racially-inflammatory and bigoted silent film, “Birth of a Nation.”

1917

In Buchanan vs. Warley, the Supreme Court has to concede that states can not restrict and officially segregate African Americans into residential districts. Also, the NAACP fights and wins the battle to enable African Americans to be commissioned as officers in World War I. Six hundred officers are commissioned, and 700,000 register for the draft..

1918

After persistent pressure by the NAACP, President Woodrow Wilson finally makes a public statement against lynching.

1920

To ensure that everyone, especially the Klan, knew that the NAACP would not be intimidated, the annual conference was held in Atlanta, considered one of the most active Klan areas.

1922

In an unprecedented move, the NAACP places large ads in major newspapers to present the facts about lynching.

1930

The first of successful protests by the NAACP against Supreme Court justice nominees is launched against John Parker, who officially favored laws that discriminated against African Americans.

1935

NAACP lawyers Charles Houston and Thurgood Marshall win the legal battle to admit a black student to the University of Maryland.

1939

After the Daughters of the Revolution barred acclaimed soprano Marian Anderson from performing at their Constitution Hall, the NAACP moved her concert to the Lincoln Memorial, where over 75,000 people attended.

1941

During World War II, the NAACP leads the effort to ensure that President Franklin Roosevelt orders a non-discrimination policy in war-related industries and federal employment.

1945

NAACP starts a national outcry when Congress refuses to fund their own Federal Fair Roosevelt Employment Practices Commission.

1945

Kerr v. Enoch Pratt Free Library argued by Charles H. Houston creating the “ Kerr Principle”. A Baltimore library refused to admit Louise Kerr to a training program because she was black. Not that it had anything against blacks, but its patrons did.  When Kerr launched a civil suit against the library alleging a violation of equal protection of the laws, the courts credited the library’s claim that it had no racist purpose, but Kerr still prevailed. The Kerr principle forced us to address when and why is the state responsible for enabling exclusive preferences, whether by an overextended applicable rule that assist them or by state inaction that fails to block them.

1946

The NAACP wins the Morgan vs. Virginia case, where the Supreme Court bans states from having laws that sanction segregated facilities in interstate travel by train and bus.

1948

The NAACP was able to pressure President Harry Truman to sign an Executive Order banning discrimination by the Federal government.

1951

December 25, Harry T. Moore was killed when a bomb was placed beneath the floor joists directly under his bed; his wife, Harriette, died nine days later.

1954

After years of fighting segregation in public schools, under the leadership of Special Counsel Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP wins one of its greatest legal victories in Brown vs. the Board of Education.

1955

NAACP member Rosa Parks is arrested and fined for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Ala. Noted as the catalyst for the largest grassroots civil rights movement, that would be spearheaded through the collective efforts of the NAACP, SCLC and other Black organizations.

1960

In Greensboro, North Carolina, members of the NAACP Youth Council launch a series of non-violent sit-ins at segregated lunch counters. These protests eventually lead to more than 60 stores officially desegregating their counters.

1963

After one of his many successful mass rallies for civil rights, NAACP’s first Field Director, Medgar Evers is assassinated in front of his house in Jackson, Mississippi. Five months later, President John Kennedy was also assassinated.

1963

NAACP pushes for the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act.

1964

U.S. Supreme Court ends the eight year effort of Alabama officials to ban NAACP activities. And 55 years after the NAACP’s founding, Congress finally passes the Civil Rights Act.

1965

The Voting Rights Act is passed. Amidst threats of violence and efforts of state and local governments, the NAACP still manages to register more than 80,000 voters in the Old South.

1979

The NAACP initiates the first bill ever signed by a governor that allows voter registration in high schools. Soon after, 24 states follow suit.

1981

The NAACP leads the effort to extend The Voting Rights Act for another 25 years. To cultivate economic empowerment, the NAACP establishes the Fair Share Program with major corporations across the country.

1982

NAACP registers more than 850,000 voters, and through its protests and the support of the Supreme Court, prevents President Reagan from giving a tax-break to the racially segregated Bob Jones University.

1985

The NAACP leads a massive anti-apartheid rally in New York.

1987

NAACP launches campaign to defeat the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. As a result, he garners the highest negative vote ever recorded for a 1989 Silent March of over 100,000 to protest U.S. Supreme Court nominee.

1989

Silent March of over 100,000 to protest U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have reversed many of the gains made against discrimination.

1991

When avowed racist and former Klan leader David Duke runs for US Senate in Louisiana, the NAACP launches a voter registration campaign that yields a 76 percent turn-out of Black voters to defeat Duke.

1992

The number of Fair Share Program corporate partners has risen to 70 and now represents billions of dollars in business.

1995

Over thirty years after the assassination of NAACP civil rights activist, Medgar Evers - his widow Myrlie, is elected Chairman of the NAACP’s Board of Directors. The following year, the Kweisi Mfume leaves Congress to become the NAACPs President and CEO.

1997

In response to the pervasive anti-affirmative action legislation occurring around the country, the NAACP launches the Economic Reciprocity Program... And in response to increased violence among our youth, the NAACP starts the “Stop The Violence, Start the Love’ campaign.

2000

TV Diversity Agree-ments. Retirement of the Debt and first six years of a budget surplus. Largest Black Voter Turnout in 20 years

Great March. January 17, in Columbia, South Carolina attended by over 50,000 to protest the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag. This is the largest civil rights demonstration ever held in the South to date.

   2001

Cincinnati Riots. Dev-elopement of 5 year Strategic Plan. Under the leadership of Chairman Bond and President Mfume, the NAACP continues to thrive.