Evaluating the Struggle for Equality and Civil Rights in the U.S. with the NAACP Papers
Little Rock Nine and Friends at the NAACP's 49th annual convention in Cleveland, 1958. Image ID: 1953739
The NAACP Papers—a collection of approximately two million historical documents from NAACP national, legal and branch offices that was previously only available on microfilm — are now accessible online to researchers onsite at the Schomburg Center, and NYPL's other research and branch libraries. Researchers wishing to access the NAACP Papers remotely must have a valid NYPL card.
There are several unique collections contained in The NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files; Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files; and Special Subjects. Also included in the collection are documents from The NAACP Major Campaigns: 1) Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, and Armed Forces; 2) Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor, and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses; and 3) Legal Department Files.
The NAACP Papers captures crucial moments in African-American and American history from the first decade of the twentieth century through the mid 1970s and chronicles the fight to end segregation, the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other historic events. Other highlights from the NAACP Papers document the Civil Rights era and Black Freedom Struggles. Furthermore, the papers include Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s FBI file and FBI files on key civil rights demonstrations in Alabama and Florida.
Within the searchable NAACP Papers that have been digitized there are also records of the National Association of Colored Women's Club (NACWC), Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Black Power Movement.
Researchers may access the digitized version of The NAACP Papers online or use the microfilm version, both of which are accessible in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division at the Schomburg Center.