spread of lawless attacks upon the Negro, North, South and West—even in Springfield made famous by Lincoln-often accompanied by revolting brutalities, sparing neither sex nor age nor youth, could but shock the author of the sentiment that "government of the people, by the people, and for the people, should not perish from the earth." Silence under these conditions means tacit approval. . . . Hence, we call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.

Among the 60 signers of this call were Jane Addams, John Dewey, John L. Elliott, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. Francis J. Grimke, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Rev. Frederick Lynch, Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, J. G. Phelps Stokes, Lincoln Steffens, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Bishop Alexander Walters, William English Walling, and Lillian D. Wald.

To continue in the words of Miss Ovington: 15

We have had five conferences since 1909 [her ac-
count was written in 1914], but I doubt whether any
have been so full of a questioning surprise, amounting
swiftly to enthusiasm, on the part of the white people
in attendance. These men and women, engaged in
religious, social, and educational work, for the first
time met the Negro who demands, not a pittance, but
his full rights in the commonwealth. . . .
In May,
1910, we held our second conference in New York,
and again our meetings were attended by earnest, in-
terested people. It was then that we organized a
permanent body to be known as the National Asso-

15 Id. at 4.

ciation for the Advancement of Colored People . . .
pledged to a nationwide work for justice to the Negro

race.

The new National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) stated its purpose to be:

16

To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or
race prejudice among the citizens of the United States;
to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure
for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their op-
portunities for securing justice in the courts, education
for their children, employment according to their
ability, and complete equality before the law.

Shortly after its organization, the NAACP formed a Legal Committee which, four years later, was to come under the chairmanship of Arthur B. Spingarn of New York. Within five years, committee activity grew from the filing of a petition of pardon for a Negro sharecropper in South Carolina to the filing of a friend-of-the-court brief in the Supreme Court of the United States attacking the constitutionality of Oklahoma's "grandfather clause." From then on it was only a matter of time before NAACP lawyers were arguing civil rights cases before the highest court in the land."

During this period another private organization dedicated to the eradication of racial discrimination was in its formative years. In 1905, an organization called the League for the Protection of Colored Women was founded by Frances Kellor and Mrs. William H. Baldwin, Jr., to help penniless and homeless Negroes from southern rural areas, particularly women, to find employment and homes in New York. The League, which gave industrial training and offered employment opportunities to both men and women, inspired the

16

Hughes, Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP 23 (1962). 17 Id. at 23-24, 27, 28, 29, 29-30.

formation of the Committee on Industrial Relations Among Negroes. By 1910, Mrs. Baldwin and a young doctor of philosophy named George Edmund Haynes organized the Committee on Urban Conditions Among Negroes because they believed that the problem of adapting the rural, southern Negro to his new, urban, industrial, northern environment was broader than just finding jobs. The new committee arranged for the education and training of social workers to organize local Leagues across the country. The following year a merger of the three interracial agencies was effected and the new organization subseqently became known as the National Urban League. In the words of Eugene Kinckle Jones, its executive secretary for 30 years, the ultimate goal of the Urban League was, "To work itself out of a job."

Federal Reaction

18

In his inaugural address in 1909, President William Howard Taft said: 19

Personally, I have not the slightest race prejudice or
feeling, and recognition of its existence only awakens
in my heart a deeper sympathy with those who have
to bear it or suffer from it, and I question the wisdom
of a policy which is likely to increase it. Meantime,
if nothing is done to prevent it, a better feeling be-
tween the Negroes and the whites in the South will
continue to grow.

President Taft also told the Nation that "while the Fifteenth Amendment has not been generally observed in the past, it ought to be observed, and the tendency of Southern legislation today is toward the enactment of electoral qualifications

18 National Urban League, Building for the Future (1956).

which shall square with that amendment." 20His administration saw the beginning of a voting case which culminated in the outlawing of the "grandfather clause" by the Supreme Court.

During the midterm elections of 1910, officials of the State of Oklahoma enforced the newly added "grandfather clause" of the State's constitution. Negro citizens, who would have been entitled to vote under the original constitutional provision, were denied access to the polls on the ground that they could not "read and write any section of the constitution." But the great majority of whites were exempted from the test because they or their ancestors were entitled to vote or were living in a foreign nation on January 1, 1866. A number of State election officers were convicted for violation of a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1870. On appeal, the Supreme Court struck down the clause stating: 21

[W]e seek in vain for any ground which would sustain any other interpretation but that the provision [is] . . . in direct and positive disregard of the 15th Amendment.

As a candidate for the Presidency in 1912, Woodrow Wilson openly appealed for the support of Negroes, who were gradually moving back into the political arena. During the campaigning, Wilson wrote that he wished to see "justice done them [the Negroes] in every matter; and not mere grudging justice, but justice executed with liberality and cordial good

20 Id. at 4.

21 Guinn v. United States, 238 U.S. 347, 365 (1915). The Court went on to hold that, since the State intended the literacy test requirement to apply only to persons not excepted by the clause, the entire State constitutional amendment must fall. Id. at 366-67. In connection with this case, the NAACP appeared for the first time before the Supreme Court.

99 22

feeling.' Many Negro leaders, long loyal to Republicanism, turned their support to Wilson."

After he was elected, Wilson listened sympathetically to the proposal of Oswald Garrison Villard that he appoint a National Race Commission to conduct a "non-partisan, scientific study of the status of the Negro in the life of the nation." Within a few months, Wilson had decided against the move and was too embarrassed to meet Villard and tell him of his decision. Already, as Arthur Link tells us, southern segregation concepts and practices had gained ascendancy in the Wilson administration.24

In the first few months of Wilson's administration, certain members of Congress introduced a number of bills directed toward establishing a national policy of segregation. In June 1913, Representative James B. Aswell of Louisiana introduced a bill "to effect certain reforms in the civil service by segregating clerks and employees of the white race from those of African blood or descent. . . . . ." In the same month, Representative William S. Howard of Georgia sought to regulate the carriage of passengers in the District of Columbia by requiring transportation companies to provide separate accommodations for whites and Negroes. In the Senate, William J. Stone of Missouri presented a resolution requesting the Senate Committee on Civil Service and Retrenchment to inquire into and report "as to the number of negroes employed in the classified civil service, showing the number employed in each department or other governmental establishment in the District of Columbia and at other places, giving aggregate sala

22 Letter to Bishop Alexander Walters reprinted in the New York American, Oct. 23, 1912, p. 4; see 1 Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House 505 (1947); see also Walters, My Life and Work 194-95 (1917).

23 Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn 233-37 (1940).

24 Link, Wilson: The New Freedom 243–54 (1956).