A Brief History Of: The NAACP

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David J. & Janice Frent Collection / Corbis

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A little more than 100 years ago, in the midst of a two-day riot, 5,000 spectators gathered in Springfield, Ill., to witness the lynching of two African-American men. Incited partly by a false rape accusation, mobs torched black-owned businesses and buildings, forcing 2,000 African Americans to permanently flee the city. That such hatred would exhibit itself in Abraham Lincoln's hometown just six months before his 100th birthday made the news even more appalling.

Less than a thousand miles away, an interracial group of some 60 activists met in New York City to discuss how best to defend Lincoln's dying legacy. They called themselves the National Negro Committee, later changing their name to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Since then, the NAACP has worked tirelessly to transform American race relations. In 1915 it protested the blockbuster silent film Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and was enthusiastically screened at the White House by Woodrow Wilson. In 1930 its members blocked the Supreme Court nomination of a segregationist judge, and nearly 25 years later the group persuaded the court to declare public-school segregation unconstitutional.

But with the rise of more confrontational styles of protest in the 1960s came doubts about the NAACP's comparatively passive legislative and judicial tactics. Membership declined through the 1990s, when executive turmoil and near bankruptcy led some to question whether the organization would even reach its 100th anniversary. It will, on Feb. 12, just weeks after the swearing-in of the nation's first African-American President, who began his political career in Springfield. Could there be a better birthday present?