HR0110 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0110 LRB096 11397 GRL 21861 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives are pleased to congratulate the members of the NAACP on the occasion of the organization's 100th anniversary on February 12, 2009; and

WHEREAS, The NAACP was founded on February 12, 1909, partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riots in Springfield; appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard, William English Walling, and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice; some 60 people, seven of whom were African American, signed the call, which was released on the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth; the group's stated goal was to secure for all people the rights guaranteed in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution; and

WHEREAS, In 1910, the NAACP established its national office in New York City and named a board of directors as well as a president, Moorfield Storey, a white constitutional lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association; the only African American among the organization's executives, W.E.B. Du Bois, was made director of publications and research and, in 1910, established the official journal of the NAACP, The Crisis; The Crisis, one of the oldest black periodicals in America, is well known as the premier crusading voice for civil rights; and

WHEREAS, By 1913, the NAACP had established branch offices in such cities as Boston, Massachusetts, Kansas City, Missouri, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Michigan, and St. Louis, Missouri; a series of early court battles, including a victory against a discriminatory Oklahoma law that regulated voting by means of a grandfather clause (Guinn v. United States, 1910), helped establish the NAACP's importance as a legal advocate; the fledgling organization also learned to harness the power of publicity through its 1915 battle against the inflammatory "Birth of a Nation", a motion picture that perpetuated demeaning stereotypes of African Americans and glorified the Ku Klux Klan; and

WHEREAS, NAACP membership grew rapidly during the 1910s, from around 9,000 in 1917 to around 90,000 in 1919, with more than 300 local branches; writer and diplomat James Weldon Johnson became the association's first black secretary in 1920, and Louis T. Wright, a surgeon, was named the first black chairman of its board of directors in 1934; and

WHEREAS, The NAACP waged a 30-year campaign against lynching, an issue among the association's top priorities; the NAACP strongly supported the federal Dyer Bill, which would have punished those who participated in or failed to prosecute lynch mobs; although the bill would pass the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate never passed the bill or any other anti-lynching legislation; most credit the resulting public debate, which was fueled by the NAACP report "Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1919", with drastically decreasing the incidence of lynching; and

WHEREAS, In 1930, Walter F. White became the NAACP's new secretary; Mr. White was instrumental not only in his research on lynching but also in his successful block of segregationist Judge John J. Parker's nomination by President Herbert Hoover to the U.S. Supreme Court; Mr. White presided over the NAACP's most productive period of legal advocacy; in 1930, the association commissioned the Margold Report, which became the basis for the successful reversal of the separate-but-equal doctrine that had governed public facilities since 1896's Plessy v. Ferguson; in 1935, Mr. White recruited Charles H. Houston, the Howard University law school dean whose strategy on school-segregation cases paved the way for his protege Thurgood Marshall to prevail in 1954's Brown v. Board of Education, as the NAACP chief counsel; and

WHEREAS, During the Great Depression, which was disproportionately disastrous for African Americans, the NAACP began to focus on economic justice; after years of tension with white labor unions, the association cooperated with the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations in an effort to win jobs for black Americans; throughout the 1940s, the NAACP saw enormous growth in membership, recording roughly 600,000 members by 1946; it continued to act as a legislative and legal advocate, pushing for a federal anti-lynching law and for an end to state-mandated segregation; and

WHEREAS, By the 1950s, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, headed by Mr. Marshall, secured the last of these goals through Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which outlawed segregation in public schools; the NAACP's Washington, D.C. bureau, led by lobbyist Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., helped advance not only integration of the armed forces in 1948 but also passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and 1968, as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the NAACP also provided legal representation and aid to members of other protest groups, including hundreds of Freedom Riders in the 1960s who had traveled to Mississippi to register black voters and challenge Jim Crow policies; and

WHEREAS, Led by Roy Wilkins, who succeeded Walter White as secretary in 1955, the NAACP cooperated with organizers A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin in planning the 1963 March on Washington; with the passage of major civil rights legislation the following year, the Association accomplished what seemed an insurmountable task and, in the following years, began to diversify its goals; and

WHEREAS, Roy Wilkins retired as executive director in 1977 and was replaced by Benjamin L. Hooks, whose tenure included the Bakke case (1978), in which a California court outlawed several aspects of affirmative action; during his tenure, Dr. Hooks is credited with implementing many NAACP programs that continue today, including the NAACP ACT-SO (Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics) competitions, a major youth talent and skill initiative, and the Women in the NAACP; Dr. Hooks served as executive director/chief executive officer (CEO) of the NAACP from 1977 until 1992; and

WHEREAS, In 1993, Benjamin F. Chavis (now Chavis Muhammad) became executive director/CEO of the NAACP; in 1995, Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of Medgar Evers, became the third woman to chair the NAACP, a position she held until 1998, when she was succeeded by current Chairman Julian Bond; and

WHEREAS, In 1996, the NAACP National Board of Directors changed the executive director/CEO title to president and CEO when it selected Kweisi Mfume, a former congressman and head of the Congressional Black Caucus, to lead the body; he was followed by former telecommunications executive Bruce S. Gordon in 2005; in May of 2008, the NAACP National Board of Directors confirmed Benjamin T. Jealous, a former community organizer, newspaper, editor and Rhodes Scholar, as the 14th national executive of the esteemed organization; and

WHEREAS, Heading into the 21st century, the NAACP is focused on disparities in economics, health care, education, voter empowerment, and the criminal justice system, while also continuing its role as legal advocate for civil rights issues that affect millions of African Americans on a daily basis; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we congratulate the members of the NAACP on the occasion of the organization's 100th anniversary and wish them continued success and happiness in their future endeavors; and be it further

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be presented to NAACP Chairman Julian Bond as a symbol of our esteem and respect.