Political Quotes

“99 years ago today, a group of courageous individuals came together to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The year of 1909 was the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Fewer than 50 years removed from the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and the carnage of the Civil War, the promise and price of that struggle must have still been fresh on the minds of many Americans. The ``Call for the Lincoln Emancipation Conference in 1909'' was designed to take stock of the progress since the end of the Civil War. The conclusion of the 60 organizers, among them the mayor of Toledo, and the president of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the conclusion was that Lincoln would have been disheartened by the Nation's failure to secure equality of law and equality of opportunity without respect to color. They faced rampant Jim Crow discrimination, conducted with the blessing of the Supreme Court. The country was plagued by race riots and lynchings in every region, even in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, IL. The founders of the NAACP understood that if true equality was to be had, the spirit of the abolitionists must be revived. So long as the North remained silent about the conditions in the South, it was supplying tacit approval. They wrote: Discrimination once permitted cannot be bridled. Recent history shows that in forging chains for the Negroes, the white voters are forging chains for themselves.…”