National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

On February 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded. Initially, they called themselves the National Negro Committee. It was founded by early civil rights activists such as: Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, and William English Walling.

The NAACP has a legacy of fighting legal battles addressing social injustices. 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. The NAACP uses protests, boycotts, sit-ins, and litigation to push for equal rights.

For more than nine decades, the NAACP has consistently relied on the membership and participation of socially conscious individuals of all races, religions, political affiliations and ideologies. Today, they have chapters in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Korea.

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Lunch Counter Sit-In

In Greensboro, North Carolina, a student was refused service at a bus terminal lunch counter. Afterwards, on February 1, 1960, Joseph McNeil and three other students went to the local Woolworth store lunch counter to be served. The waitress refused service and the four young men were arrested.

Each day after that, protestors returned and grew in numbers. Black adults joined in and expanded the action to include a boycott of downtown store areas. When the stores reached financial ruin, the decision was made to desegregate the lunch counters. The success of the boycott led to other non-violent protests around the country.

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Wounded Knee II

At the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, problems between the Indian people who supported the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the tribal leaders who had the support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) came to a head. After a violent confrontation in 1972, AIM members were condemned by President Wilson and banned from the reservation.

In February of 1973, AIM leaders and 200 activists took over the village of Wounded Knee. Declaring themselves independent from the United States, the Oglala Sioux Nation was created and they defined their boundaries by the Treaty of Fort Laramie.

During a siege that lasted 71 days, federal marshal, FBI agents, and armored vehicles surrounded the village. AIM agreed to end their occupation under the condition that the federal government convene a full investigation into the demands and grievances of the American Indian Movement.

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