Abstract:

It is well known that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) ignited the struggle against education desegregation in the United States with the landmark Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education . Less well known is that three decades before, the NAACP launched an historic fight against racially motivated violence that changed the nation and shaped the trajectory of all their future civil rights activism. Crime and Citizenship is the first comprehensive analysis of the NAACP's campaign against racial violence. This dissertation reveals the NAACP deployed a social movement struggle for African American citizenship centered on the issues of lynching and mob violence from 1909-1923. In particular, the project focuses on the NAACP's work in engaging all three branches of the federal government. Through a strategic and well-formulated campaign, the NAACP raised public awareness, won over American presidents, and secured the support of Congressmen in the effort to reform America's vile criminal justice practices. Finally, in the NAACP's most far-reaching victory, the Supreme Court broke from a long tradition of federalism and ruled that the constitutional rights of African American defendants were violated by an impassioned white mob. The NAACP is key to understanding why the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches addressed the issue of racial violence. The project uses extensive archival materials and presents a historically rich narrative that not only describes the NAACP's social, political, and legal activism around the area of racial violence but also provides important insight about the way the American political and legal systems have developed over time. The project challenges contemporary understandings and presents a re-evaluation of the progression of the civil rights movement and the struggle for African American citizenship.