NAACP marks historic first century
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In a 1975 march supporting integration in the public schools nationwide, about 70 participants walked from Crawford Street and Centre Avenue, Uptown, through the Hill District into Oakland and ended at Flagstaff Hill. The march was sponsored by the Pittsburgh chapter of the NAACP. -
The NAACP marched to the Washington post office on May 10, 1964, to mail a letter urging senators to pass the Civil Rights Bill. -
Alma S. Fox, of Stanton Heights, has been an activist with the NAACP Pittsburgh chapter for more than 50 years.
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No one could have planned such symbolic symmetry -- less than a month after the United States inaugurated its first black president, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Thursday will mark 100 years of seeking equality for all.
Still, perhaps a hand was at work, suggested longtime civil rights activist Alma S. Fox, of Stanton Heights.
"The dear Lord plans all things. All I know it's great this is the 100th anniversary of the NAACP and one of those colored people [whose rights the organization advanced] is the head of our country.
"It is absolutely wonderful," said Ms. Fox, 85, who for 50 years -- half of the national organization's existence -- served on the Pittsburgh chapter's board of directors before recently stepping down.
Neither coincidence nor providence is responsible for the organization's centennial occurring on the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. In 1909, when a multi-racial group of activists in New York formed what would become the NAACP, the members were well aware of the symbolism of issuing a "call for a national conference on the Negro question" on the 100th birthday of the Great Emancipator.
On Thursday, NAACP units in more than 1,200 communities will begin a yearlong celebration of the milestone with centennial cakes and a recommitment to the organization's mission to "ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination."
But while great progress toward those ends has been achieved over the last century, "our journey remains unfinished," NAACP President Ben Jealous said in a statement.
"The audacious dream of America, a land where opportunity exists for all and where every person is given a chance to reach their full potential, still remains elusive," he said, noting that African-Americans still have not received parity in education and economic opportunities in every community.
Because of that, the NAACP will issue a civil rights challenge for the first 100 days to the new Congress and the Obama administration.
Still, there's no denying what the NAACP has achieved during its historic first century. Ms. Fox has been on the front lines for nearly three-quarters of that struggle. It was nearly 73 years ago when Ms. Fox, then living in Cleveland, first joined the NAACP at age 13 at the urging of her activist parents.
"God, family and the NAACP. That's my life," she said.
And, Ms. Fox added, her life and the lives of other black people have improved politically, educationally, socially and economically because of the work of the NAACP.
She was among the thousands, black and white, who worked on behalf of civil rights. She marched in her first of many NAACP picket lines when she was 16, protesting hiring practices by Bell Telephone Co. in Cleveland.
She married and moved to Pittsburgh in 1949, settling in Larimer and later Homewood, where she resided for more than 40 years. In 1955, she became president of the women's auxiliary of the NAACP's Pittsburgh chapter and a member of its board. In 1966, she began a four-year stint as executive director and has held virtually every office except president, even serving on the state NAACP board.
In Pittsburgh, she said, she felt more discrimination than in Cleveland because she was older and understood all of its overt and subtle forms.
"What I learned when I became an adult was, 'I'll be darned. That's what that was,' " she said, adding that those experiences spurred her to more activism.
Dr. Laurence Glasco, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh for 40 years with an expertise in race relations, said the founding of the NAACP chapter here in 1915 was met with much enthusiasm that ebbed in the 1920s. The group's activism was revived in the 1930s but really caught fire in the 1950s.
"World War II had a lot to do with it, organizing a war dedicated to fighting for democracy abroad against Nazi racism. It gave a lot of leverage to blacks here and softened up white attitudes," he said. "Before, if a white person was interested in better race relations and the cause of racial justice, you were suspected of being a pinko or a communist.
"Now, after the war, you could be a real patriot by demanding civil rights."
Part of the work by blacks to show the hypocrisy of fighting racism abroad while allowing it to be legal here was the "Double V" campaign, for "Victory Abroad and Victory at Home," started in February 1942 by the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most influential black newspapers in the country. For a year, the Courier's national campaign -- articles, editorials, letters, as well as pins, banners and posters bearing a Double V logo -- demanded that blacks, many of whom were fighting overseas, receive the full fruits of citizenship at home.
The 1960s brought a new burst of energy to the Pittsburgh NAACP, Dr. Glasco said. Ms. Fox, Byrd Brown, Jim McCoy and other activists led the push for better employment opportunities during the city's urban renewal efforts, including the construction of the U.S. Steel Building, and at companies such as Duquesne Light, Sears, Kaufmann's and Mine Safety Appliance.
"There were demonstrations every week at some corporation, department store, brewery or government building," Ms. Fox said, recalling how she took her children with her. She laughed about being pregnant during some of the protests, noting that the youngest of her five children participated in demonstrations before she was born.
She agreed with Mr. Jealous that while the NAACP has made great strides in its mission here and throughout the county, more needs to be done.
"The benefit of us having done as much as we have makes it a little easier," Ms. Fox said. "We don't have as many obstacles now.
"This all started because of lynchings and that's been overcome. We don't have to worry about that anymore. We don't have to worry about the opportunity to be educated."
Because of such accomplishments in the legal arena, Dr. Glasco said, the NAACP "has moved into a new era, where the struggle is different. The challenge for the new generation is to figure out new tactics."
Because racial inequality is illegal, he said, racism "is not as flagrant, it's more covert, it's institutional racism that has a lot to do now with the way opportunities are offered."
Housing is one area that has not been integrated, he said, and from that "so many things flow," such as a lack of quality schools. Moreover, lack of housing opportunities creates racial isolation.
"These sorts of informal and more subtle, but effective, barriers have created a split in the black community where you have a middle class that has, one way or another, taken advantage of opportunities, moving up quite well, but there is still a large body in segregated areas," he said.
Still, he is hopeful. He said the election of President Barack Obama has provided many Americans with a feeling that racism, if not yet eliminated, is being defeated.
"For a long time we took a beating in the world's public opinion because we were so backward on race, but now, for sure America has surpassed [other countries]," he said. "No country in the world has elected a member of a minority group to lead the country in a set of free elections, and we come out of that with high hopes and high regard.
"It shows America can become a beacon of equality."
For 100 years, the NAACP has fought for that very ideal.
First Published February 8, 2009 12:00 am
