The NAACP-Inc. Fund Alliance: Its Strategy, Power, and Destruction

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONForty years after Marshall's righteous persuasion placed judicial jewel of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) in NAACP-Inc. Fund's crown, even middle-class Blacks consider themselves be victimized by racism (Cose, 1993). Marshall saw paradox coming, and in 1978 he sounded an alarm in a speech given at Howard University Law School:Today we have reached point where people say, We've come a long way. But so have other people come a long way....Has gap gotten smaller? It's getting bigger....People say we are better off today. Better [off] than what? (quoted in Bell, 1987, p. 63)Anticipating a predictable response, Marshall added: am amazed at people who say that, 'the poorest Negro kid in South better off than kid in South Africa.' So what! We are not in South Africa. We are here (quoted in Bell, 1987, p. 63).The most meaningful measurement of Black well-being in America results not from Black-to-Black comparisons made over time but from White-to-Black comparisons made both over time and by rate of achievement. The idea, according Fein (1970), to take account of a frequent and significant phenomenon: nonwhite moving up more slowly than white did when, many years ago, white stood where nonwhite now is (pp. 103-104). Because even a narrow improvement in well-being can mislead analysts, Fein used a simple but informative measure in his comparison of White-Black well-being. As he explains:Where data permit, I calculate a time-lag statistic: how many years earlier did white American--with full range of opportunity open him--attain particular level (say, of health, education, income) that Negro--so long denied that opportunity--has reached only today. I also ask whether this gap (in years) greater or less than at earlier times (that is, was Negro more years behind in some earlier period). I thus compare relative speed of movement over same range of experience. The change in length of gap depends upon relative rates of change of white and Negro indicators over time...(p. 104)His conclusion:The results are disturbing: in a number of cases time gap has been widening rather than narrowing. Today Negro further behind white (in years) than he once was. (p. 104)No single sufficient explanation for this discrepancy existed in 1965 or 1978; nor there any in 1994. There is, however, an overarching judicial explanation: separate-but-equal doctrine promulgated in 1896 by Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson--the doctrine that lawyer Marshall persuaded Supreme Court overturn in Brown--still pumps its venom of racism through body politic of White America.Brown seemed at first an answer African Americans' prayers for effective, equitable public education. Those prayers explained why Marshall and his comrades chose make the big legal push (as William Henry Hastie called it) on that front (Carter, 1946c; Hastie, 1946b; Marshall, 1947c; Wilkins, 1948). When Supreme Court spoke in Brown, many Blacks heard ringing of a freedom bell. They rejoiced and recalled words of African American spiritual, How I Got Over (Cobbs & Morris, 1977). Many Whites, on other hand, heard a battle cry and set out not only sabotage Court's decision but destroy noble alliance that had forged it (Greenberg, 1962a).THE NOBLE ALLIANCE(1)The alliance that focus of this article consisted of National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and its progeny: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., commonly called Fund. Their tangled associations would be direct causal factors in alliance's rise and demise over course of almost a generation, one made historic largely because of Inc. Fund's functioning under Thurgood Marshall's direction. …