NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement - Salem Press

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664 ■ National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The Thirties in America million African American women who worked cleaning white families’ homes found themselves without jobs. In the South, hungry Caucasians began to take jobs that had been traditionally held by African Americans. Bellhops and other African American workers were fired so that Caucasians could have their jobs. At the peak of the Depression, a majority of African American workers were on government relief. The Works Progress Administration (renamed the Works Projects Administration in 1939) and other government agencies created by the New Deal to help U.S. citizens affected by the Depression often discriminated against African Americans. Private charities—even some religious organizations—also found ways of favoring needy Caucasians over needy African Americans and some soup kitchens and breadlines turned away African American families. Despite a sharp decline in its membership as a result of the Depression, the NAACP still managed to continue its civil-rights mission. It successfully opposed southern plans to close down relief projects in order to force African Americans into picking cotton for considerably low wages. NAACP executive secretary Walter White, who was a friend and adviser to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, met with her often in attempts to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to outlaw job discrimination in the armed forces, defense industries, and the agencies spawned by Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation. Roosevelt did not publicly support civil rights for African Americans, and his administration was silent on the issue until the late 1930’s, when Eleanor Roosevelt began to speak up on behalf of African Americans. The NAACP’s other activities ranged from supporting a student strike at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, to challenging the exclusion of African Americans from juries. The NAACP represented African Americans accused of crimes, which included its help with the defense of nine African American boys, aged fourteen to twenty, later known as the “Scottsboro Boys,” who were charged with raping two white women on a freight train in Scottsboro, Alabama. The NAACP also fought against Jim Crow-segregated cars on railroads and street railways and segregated neighborhoods and for the right for African Americans to belong to trade unions. The NAACP also opposed vigorously the unequal salaries paid to African American public school teachers. The association was successful in preventing the exclusion of African American Boy Scouts from the 1937 Scout Jamboree held in Washington, D.C. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused permission for famous opera singer Marian Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., because it did not allow African Americans to perform there. The NAACP, with the aid of the Roosevelts, was able to arrange an open-air concert for her on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On Easter Sunday in 1939, Anderson performed to a crowd of more than seventy-five thousand people of all colors and to a radio audience of millions. Throughout the 1930’s the NAACP mounted scores of investigations and court actions that challenged efforts to deny African Americans the civil rights that were guaranteed to all U.S. citizens under the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The NAACP during the 1930’s was relentless in keeping the issues of race discrimination in the public eye. By the end of the decade, the NAACP had begun to realize the fruit of its labor with important legal victories and its increasing influence nationally and internationally. Impact The NAACP’s forceful and persistent litigation and civil rights activism during the 1930’s ultimately resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court overthrowing its “separate but equal” doctrine for public schools with its 1954 landmark ruling in Brown v. the Board of the Education. The NAACP’s lobbying efforts and legal challenges continued throughout the Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s and resulted in the eventual passage of a number of laws designed to stop racial inequality in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, and housing. Eddith A. Dashiell Further Reading Jones, Gilbert. Freedom’s Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism, 1909-1969. New York: Routledge, 2005. Rhym, Darren. The NAACP. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002. Santella, Andrew. The NAACP: An Organization Working to End Discrimination. Chanhassen, Minn.: Child’s World, 2004. Sullivan, Patricia. Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: New Press, 2009. Tushnet, Mark V. The NAACP’s Legal Strategy Against
The Thirties in America National Association of Manufacturers ■ 665 Segregating Education, 1925-1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Zangrando, Robert L. The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909-1950. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980. See also Anderson, Marian; Bethune, Mary Mc- Leod; Breedlove v. Suttles; Civil rights and liberties in the United States; Du Bois, W. E. B.; Jim Crow segregation; Lynching; Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada; Race riots; Racial discrimination; Scottsboro trials; Supreme Court, U.S.; Voting rights. ■ Identification Business interest group formed to promote the growth of American industry Date Established in 1895 The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has been one of the most powerful and important business interest groups in the United States. During the economic turmoil of the 1930’s the organization undertook a massive public-relations campaign highlighting the strengths of American business. Since its late nineteenth century founding in Cincinnati, Ohio, the NAM has consistently been one of the most powerful broad-based business interest groups in the United States. The NAM was originally conceived as an umbrella interest organization for manufacturers during the recessionary 1890’s. Following the prosperous 1920’s, the NAM was forced to return to its roots as an advocate for a befallen industrial base. During the 1930’s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal expanded the federal government to cope with the shrinking U.S. economy and, in the following decade, the heavy demands of World War II. This increased government activity took the form of bureaucratic hiring and spending and expanded regulation and oversight of business not seen since the Progressive Era. American manufacturing concerns, which had enjoyed a position of societal leadership in the preceding decades and would during the postwar boom of the 1950’s, were threatened and entrenched during the 1930’s. This collective anxiety prompted the NAM to spend the decade in a defensive posture. The group’s strategy was to launch a massive, multi- million-dollar public-relations campaign not selling particular products, such as laundry soap or small appliances, but selling the broadly conceived idea of American business. The group transformed into a public-relations firm for what it called at the time “the American way of life,” a euphemism for positioning business at the vanguard of U.S. society. The NAM aimed for private-sector businesses and not the Roosevelt administration to hold the controlling interest in the United States. Actions by the NAM during the 1930’s solidified the bond between conservative political ideology and the corporate lobby. For example, the NAM sponsored conservative radio commentators in most major media markets. It even launched its own radio program, called The American Family Robinson, that highlighted the regulatory misdeeds of what the NAM considered to be the overactive Roosevelt administration. Specifically, the NAM took issue with pro-labor collectivebargaining policies, a shortened workday, and increases in the minimum rate of pay. Impact In NAM-produced short films and newspaper ads, interventionist government policies were painted as enemies of the common working man. At first blush, the NAM could have been seen as an elite organization composed of capital-driven organizations, but the group did not present itself that way while making its policy points. It was a strong advocate for business leaders but also relayed the message of solidarity with everyday working Americans. R. Matthew Beverlin Further Reading Fones-Wolf, Elizabeth. “Creating a Favorable Business Climate: Corporations and Radio Broadcasting, 1934 to 1954.” Business History Review 73 (Summer, 1999): 221-255. Soffer, Jonathan. “The National Association of Manufacturers and the Militarization of American Conservatism.” Business History Review 75 (Winter, 2001): 775-805. Tedlow, Richard S. “The National Association of Manufacturers and Public Relations During the New Deal.” Business History Review 50, no. 1 (1976): 25-45. See also Advertising in the United States; Business and the economy in the United States; Great Depression in the United States; New Deal; Recession of 1937-1938; Unemployment in the United States.
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