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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 6. The N.A.A.C.P. Branches
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Chapter 39. Improvement and Protest Organizations 823
nurses and internes in municipal hospitals. The branches are to strive for wider
employment opportunities and better wages for Negroes; discrimination in Civil
Service employments should be opposed. The branches should cooperate with all
community efforts touching the welfare of Negro citizens, and should combat
unfavorable treatment of the Negro in the local press. They should cultivate cordial
relations between the races in the community. Negroes should be encouraged to
qualify for voting and to vote; all possible influence should be brought to bear toward
the adoption and enforcement of civil rights laws; discriminatory practices in the
administration of relief and on government work projects should be exposed and
protested; and better housing for Negroes should be striven for.^®
As suggested in this statement, the National Office advises its branches on
tactics as well as aims. The branches are advised “that injury to one Negro
on racial grounds affects the status of the whole group, and hence, the
health and happiness of our American civilization.”^^ The present War,
with the many problems it raises or aggravates for Negroes, has, qf course,
increased the demands upon the branches.
When these things are considered: the immensity of the tasks set for the
branches 5
the high demands made upon the time, interest, intelligence, and
tact of the branch officers j
the fact that those officers are not salaried but
work on a voluntary basis in their free timej the inherent difficulties of
minority tactics and, particularly, the power situation in the South j
the fact
that few white people outside the national center of the organization are
prepared to give assistance or even sympathy to the work 5
while poverty,
ignorance, and defeatism are widespread among the Negro masses—when
all these adverse factors are considered, it should not be a surprise that
hardly any branch even approaches the realization of the ideals envisaged
for its active working.^^ If we consider the handicaps under which the
branches work, we should classify them, before the War, as a few energetic
branches, some dormant branches, and the majority of branches somewhere
between.^^ As is natural, branches in the South had small membership rolls
and showed little activity. They often seemed to run through a sort of
irregular vitality cycle.
( I ) The normal condition is local inactivity but with maintenance of a basic mem-
bership roll and more or less regular meetings, where the stress is usually given
to the general goals of the Association more than to the specific problems of the
locality. There are always social and educational entertainments. Belonging to
the Association and paying dues is, in the upper classes, considered a minimum
duty of a “race man” and a sign of community spirit and social respectability.
“In the main,” states a president of a local association in the Upper South, “we
are concerned with collecting the dollar to aid the national group financially
—
you see we have so many organizations here to take up people’s time.”^^
Another head o£ a branch in the Deep South, whose policy is one o£ caution
because he fears greater repression by local whites, explains it this way: “Our
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