The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in response to the brutal race massacre in Springfield, Illinois, in August of 1908, where a white mob ransacked Black neighborhoods, burned businesses and lynched two Black men and injured dozens of others.
By February 12, 1909, the NAACP was officially founded in New York. Comprising the 60 founding members of the NAACP were prominent white descendants of abolitionists and African-Americans, including W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell.
The organization’s principal objective is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of the United States and eliminate racial prejudice.

(Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty images)