National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

US civil‐rights organization dedicated to ending inequality and segregation for blacks through nonviolent protest. Founded in 1909, its first aim was to eradicate lynching. Since then the NAACP has campaigned to end segregation and discrimination in education, public accommodations, voting, and employment, and to protect the constitutional rights of blacks. It has made the most significant gains for civil rights through groundbreaking judicial cases. NAACP lawyers led by Thurgood Marshall were instrumental in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which officially ended segregation in public schools. Desegregation was only fully achieved through the civil‐rights movement of the 1960s.

The NAACP was founded by a group of white liberals, including labour reformer William Walling, newspaper editor Oswald Villard, social worker Jane Addams, philosopher John Dewey, and novelist William Dean Howells. Most of the officials were white, but most of the members were drawn from the ranks of the black middle‐class. In 1909 it merged with the Niagara Movement founded in 1905 by W E B Du Bois, who went on to edit the NAACP journal The Crisis 1910–34. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund was founded in 1939 to act as the legal arm of the civil‐rights movement.

The organization has been criticized by militants and black separatists for its moderate stance, its commitment to integration, and for depending too heavily on funds from white liberals. In 1986 its headquarters moved from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland.

During World War II NAACP membership increased from 50,000 to 400,000. In 1999 its membership was around 500,000.