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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 825
Another difficulty of the typical N.A.A.C.P. branch is the competition
for interest, time, and money from churches, lodges and social clubs of all
sorts. Particularly as the N.A.A.C.P. cannot promise much in immediate
returns for the individual, this competition is serious. Other competition
comes from independent local civic organizations, often with the same local
program.’*’^ There are hundreds of such organizations, often several in one
city. The explanation of this is partly the same as of the great number of
splits in sects and churches.® The local organizations sometimes thrive upon
the spread of suspicion and even hostility against the N.A.A.C.P. as
^‘foreign,” ^^outside” or “meddling by a clique of New Yorkers.” But
more often the motives for the split are even more superficial and petty.
Undoubtedly, it would mean a great increase in strength for the N.A.A.C.P.
—and an equally great asset for the Negroes’ organizational activity as a
whole—if these organizations could be integrated as branches of the Asso-
ciation.
Sometimes, however, there are more objective reasons for organizational
duplication. In an earlier chapter we have given an illustration from a city
in the Lower South where a League for Civic Improvement was maintained
to do the pussy-footing with which the N.A.A.C.P. could not be com-
promised.’* In a city in the Upper South there is a powerful Committee on
Negro Affairs with a membership of around a thousand, carrying on most
of the Negro politics in the community. The N.A.A.C.P. branch has only
about a hundred members. According to the president, the main function
of the branch now seems to be one of patient waiting—it will step into the
breach if the Committee fails or if the backing of the National Office is
needed.^® The leaders of the Committee on Negro Affairs, on the other
hand, point out that the N.A.A.C.P. “help,s us because the white man will
do things for us to keep the N.A.A.C.P. out.” A prominent Negro leader
in one of the largest cities of the Deep South, who, himself, regards the
N.A.A.C.P. as “radical,” explains;
The South doesn’t like the N.A.A.C.P. and regards it as an alien force; but though
whites won’t give to the radical group what it demands, the conservative group can
come behind and capitalize on the situation created by the “radicals.” Therefore,
both radical and conservative Negro groups are necessary—the radicals do the block-
ing and tackling and the conservatives “carry the ball.”^®
If all the difficulties under which a Negro protest movement has to
work in the South are remembered, it is rather remarkable, in the final
analysis, that the N.A.A.C.P. has been able to keep up and slowly build
out its network of branches in the region, and that several of the Southern
branches have been so relatively active. A strength of the organization is
* See Chapter 40.
^
See Chapter 37, Section 10.
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