PAPERS of the NAACP Part Special Subject Files, 11 1912-1939
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A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of BLACK STUDIES RESEARCH SOURCES Microfilms from Major Archival and Manuscript Collections General Editors: John H. Bracey, Jr. and August Meier PAPERS OF THE NAACP Part Special Subject Files, 11 1912-1939 Series A: Africa through Garvey, Marcus Series B: Harding, Warren G. through YWCA UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of BLACK STUDIES RESEARCH SOURCES Microfilms from Major Archival and Manuscript Collections General Editors: John H. Bracey, Jr. and August Meier PAPERS OF THE NAACP Part 11. Special Subject Files, 1912-1939 Series A: Africa through Garvey, Marcus Series B: Harding, Warren G. through YWCA Edited by John H. Bracey, Jr. and August Meier Project Coordinator Randolph Boehm Guide compiled by David Werning A microfilm project of UNIVERSITY PUBLICATIONS OF AMERICA An Imprint of CIS 4520 East-West Highway * Bethesda, Maryland 20814-3389 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Papers of the NAACP. [microform] Accompanied by printed reel guides. Contents: pt, 1. Meetings of the Board of Directors, records of annual conferences, major speeches, and special reports, 1909-1950 / editorial adviser, August Meier; edited by Mark Fox--pt. 2. Personal correspondence of selected NAACP officials, 1919-1939 / editorial--[etc.]--pt. 11, ser. A & B. Special subject files, 1912-1939. 1. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-Archives. 2. Afro-Americans-Civil Rights--History--20th century-Sources. 3. Afro- Americans--Histdry--1877-1964--Sources. 4. United States--Race relations-Sources. I. Meier, August, 1923- . II. Boehm, Randolph. III. Title. E185.61 [Microfilm] 973'.0496073 86-692185 ISBN 1-55655-158-4 (microfilm : pt. 11 A) ISBN 1-55655-175-4 (microfilm : pt. 11B) Copyright® 1991 by University Publications of America. All rights reserved. ISBN 1-55655-176-2. TABLE OF CONTENTS Scope and Content Note v Note on Sources. ix Editorial Note ix Series A: Africa through Garvey, Marcus Table of Contents 3 Acronym List 7 Reel Index 9 Correspondent Index 73 Subject index 95 Series B: Harding, Warren G. through YWCA Table of Contents 119 Reellndex 125 Correspondent Index 201 Subject Index 223 SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE Part 11 of UPA's microfilm series Papers of the NAACP is an omnibus edition of files from the Subject series of the first accession of the NAACP collection that have not been previously microfilmed for Parts 1 through 10 of the series. The selection was made after an exhaustive survey by Professors John H. Bracey, Jr. and August Meier of the entire 418-container Administrative File for Group I (1909- 1939) of the collection. Upon concluding the survey, the editors decided that every substantive file from the Subject series should be microfilmed except those already drawn upon for earlier parts of Papers of the NAACP. This editorial policy entailed microfilming almost the entire remaining Subject series for Group I of the collection. The few subject files that were omitted included files of circular letters from other organizations. The arrangement of the subject files on the microfilm duplicates the alphabetical subject arrangement of the original files at the Library of Congress. The two parts of the microfilm (11A and 11B) form one continuous alphabetical subject file, from "Africa" to "YWCA." (The edition was divided into two parts in order to facilitate incremental purchases by libraries.) Researchers may want to consult finding aids for earlier parts of the microfilm edition of Papers of the NAACP (notably Parts 3 through 10) to ascertain which subject files were previously filmed and are therefore absent from Part 11. It should also be noted that the Library of Congress maintains an active Addendum file of materials for the 1909-1939 period (in Series L of Group II of the collection) wherein are filed newly discovered items that surface in more recent accessions. The addendum subject file from Group II has not been microfilmed with this edition. Part 11 includes subjects that were not sufficiently extensive to warrant creating separate microfilm publications, but which are nonetheless crucial to the NAACP's early history. A partial list found in this edition would include the campaign against the movie, Birth of a Nation (filed under the Films and Plays series in Part 11A), the controversy over W. E. B. Du Bois's economic philosophy in the 1930s, the NAACP's monitoring of the Ku Klux Klan, complaints about segregationist practices throughout the South and racially discriminatory practices elsewhere in America before 1940, conferences with other racial advancement organizations, and NAACP participation in political campaigns. There are large series of files devoted to each of these subjects in Part 11. Additionally, these files often document minor though significant events in NAACP history before 1940 or relations between the NAACP and friendly organizations such as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, and Howard University. Following are fuller descriptions of the major subject series included in Part 11 of Papers of the NAACP. Civil Rights (complaints and legislation) The Civil Rights series includes complaints brought under civil rights laws in northern states, where there had been some legislative enactments proscribing racial discrimination, usually in public accommodations such as restaurants, parks, and theaters. States with extensive files include California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. These files document the NAACP's use of local branches to assure that state civil rights laws were respected, and in several cases the files document campaigns to enact civil rights legislation to strengthen that which already existed. The files incidentally reveal much about the settlement of blacks in northern states and about black political strength in the North before 1940. Discrimination and Segregation Before 1940 segregation was widespread throughout the United States and firmly entrenched throughout the South. The NAACP national office received complaints from all over the nation from victims of race discrimination. These complaints provide vivid detail on the impact of segregation in American society and on the attitudes of African Americans toward the color bar. The extensive file on discriminatory practices by hospitals is especially valuable for the light it sheds on the dilemmas faced by black physicians and health care professionals before 1940. Ku Klux Klan The NAACP closely monitored the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. The files on the organization include complaints from individuals who were harassed or threatened by the Klan and an extensive clipping file from newspapers throughout the country. Since documentation on this clandestine organization is rare in any form, the extensive clipping file is probably one of the best sources in existence on the Klan. The files are most copious during the 1920s when the Klan reached the apex of its membership and influence. The files for the 1920s also document the NAACP's efforts to have the national Republican party repudiate the Klan. Films and Plays In 1915 the release of D.W. Griffith's motion picture Birth of a Nation sent shock waves through the nascent NAACP. The film's glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its grotesquely negative depictions of African Americans threatened to enlist the powerful new medium of the motion picture in worsening the ugly racial climate prevalent in the early years of the century. In what became one of the most significant early NAACP campaigns, NAACP national secretary May Childs Nerney spearheaded an effort to have the film censored for fear that it wou Id incite race riots and other forms of violence. Borrowing a tactic from the women's suffrage movement, of which she was also a member, Nerney pioneered the use of pickets protesting the film at public theaters. Local NAACP branches also pressed for municipal bans against showing the film. The campaign is fully documented in the Films and Plays series of the subject files under Birth of a Nation. There is extensive documentation of the NAACP's efforts to have the film banned at the local level as a threat to public safety, and the series also documents the formation of the National Board of Censorship, the self-censoring arm of the motion picture industry that weighed censorship on a national scale. The Films and Plays series also contains many briefer files on both film and theatrical productions that made use of black actors or stereotypes, including Eugene O'Neill's productions, All God's Chillun' Got Wings and Emperor Jones. The files document both negative and positive roles for blacks in the performing arts. Blacks in American Politics Along with its work for legal redress against racial injustice in courts of law, the NAACP assumed the leading role as political advocate for the African-American community on the national level. While most of the NAACP's political energies were focused upon passing antilynching legislation (the subject of Part 7B of UPA's Papers of the NAACP) and New Deal economic legislation (the subject of Part 10), several other important campaigns are documented in the subject files reproduced here. The most important and best-documented case is the campaign against the nomination of Judge John J. Parker to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1930. Parker had been an open advocate of black disenfranchisement early in his political career, and his nomination to the Supreme Court by Herbert Hoover elicited a vigorous protest from the NAACP. The campaign to defeat the nomination drew upon blocks of African-American political strength in every section of the country outside the South. After Parker's defeat, the association followed up with a campaign to defeat incumbent Republican senators who supported the Parker nomination. Each of these campaigns in states such as Delaware, New Jersey, Ohio, and Indiana is well documented.