The NAACP at 102

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12, 2015 — Thursday, February 12th. One of the nation’s major civil rights organizations is 106 years old today — the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Founded to combat lynching and segregation, the NAACP continues to work toward greater opportunities for minorities.

One of its most telling moments came with the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, which desegregated the nation’s schools. The lawyer who argued that case, Thurgood Marshall, became the first African-American Supreme Court justice.

When the NAACP was founded, there were 9.8 million African-Americans in the U.S. Today that number, including mixed-race blacks, is over 43.6 million.

You can find more facts about America’s people, places and economy, from the American Community Survey, at www.census.gov.

Sources:

NAACP Organization: www.naacp.org/pages/naacp-history

Early Black population: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, p. 17

Black alone or in combination with other races: www.factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_13_1YR_B02009&prodType=table

Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at www.census.gov (look for “Multimedia Gallery” by the “Newsroom” button).