Encyclopedia

This interactive encyclopedia offers teachers and students access to terms, people, and events related to the history of Jim Crow. Many entries include reference material and some of the biographies on prominent figures contain suggestions for teaching as well as links to related sections of this site. The encyclopedia will continue to grow throughout the course of this project.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): [1910] An organization founded by leading racial equality advocates from both races and dedicated to the legal pursuit of civil rights for black Americans. Moorfield Storey, a white Boston attorney, became its first president, while the black intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois served as director of publications and editor of its journal, The Crisis. Doggedly litigating case after case in the courts, the Association's legal team included a future justice of the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall. By 1954, a body of legal precedents had been established by successful litigation, which undermined Jim Crow in the courts on the state and Federal levels. Its crusade culminated in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling that mandated school desegregation and reversed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision upholding segregation. For teacher-reviewed external web sites on the NAACP, click here.

National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs: Established in 1896, the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs is the oldest non-sectarian organization for African Americans. It was established because the General Federation of Women's Clubs, founded in 1890, refused to admit African-American women's organizations. The Association operated through several departments that focused on issues of concern to the African-American women's community. Among these issues were employment, suffrage, lynching, temperance, politics, and kindergartens although its focus remained on women and children.

In 1912, the Association began to sponsor college scholarships and by the mid-20th century virtually every state had a chapter. During the 1920s the Association established a specific legislative branch, which monitored issues of importance to African Americans. The Association also saw itself within the motto "Lifting as we climb" suggesting that Africa- American women aspired to the same goals as all good and aspiring women. Harriet Tubman, Francis Harper, and Mary Church Terrell were all listed as members of the Association.

National Urban League: Founded in 1919, it was the most systematic and active African-American organization helping black migrants to northern cities. It provided job and housing registries, counsel on work habits and housekeeping, and advice on handling landlords and urban police.

Negro History Bulletin: The Negro History Bulletin, also known as The African- American History Bulletin, is a widely circulated, historically oriented, magazine published by the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, incorporated in 1915 in Washington D. C.. Its founder, Carter G. Woodson, published the Bulletin in 1937 as a companion to the Journal of Negro History, begun in 1916. Whereas the Journal concentrates on scholarly essays and book reviews, the Bulletin is aimed at a larger popular audience and notes contemporary issues associated with black history and culture.

Negro History Week: Originally established in 1926 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson, Negro History Week has grown from the celebration of the birthdays of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass during the second week of February to an entire month-long celebration of African-American pride, history, and culture. Dr. Woodson was a noted author and scholar, and the founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Negro History Week expanded to Black History Month. It is now a nationally recognized celebration of black culture that is featured in most colleges and universities in the nation and typically observed by many civic bodies and organizations as well.

Negro National Baseball League: A major but segregated league, established in 1918, for black baseball teams. Before its establishment, black baseball players were relegated to disorganized games and tours. Many of the nation's 30 black players competed and played with white players until 1887, when white players urged club owners to bar blacks from playing in the major leagues, which the International League agreed to do in 1887. Thereafter, black players were relegated to unstable playing conditions to say the least, although there were five black teams in 1900, including the Norfolk Red Stockings, the Chicago Unions, and the Cuban X Giants of New York. Although Negro League stars occasionally competed against white players in demonstration games, no black man played on a major league team with white players until Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.

Negro Society for Historical Research: Founded in 1911 by Arthur Schomburg and John E. Bruce, the Negro Society for Historical Research was conceived as a means of disseminating and encouraging research and the publication of scholarly articles on black history. It was conceived as a way of countering the idea that white scholars were intellectually superior to blacks. In conjunction with this effort, the bibliographer and black intellectual Schomburg also gathered together the largest collection of African and African-American materials ever collected, numbering over ten thousand, which was later purchased by the Carnegie Corporation and donated to the New York Public Library's Negro Division.

Newsome, Effie Lee: (1885-1979) An author of children's poems as well as poems for adults, Effie Lee Newsome spent most of her adult life in Wilberforce, Ohio. She was born Mary Effie Lee (the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Lee, president of Wilberforce College and a bishop in the AME Church) and educated at Wilberforce, Oberlin, and the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1920s, she worked for W.E.B. Du Bois at the Crisis magazine, writing a regular children's column wherein she delighted young African Americans with nature poetry, nonsense verse, and stories about being young and black in the racially biased America. Several of her poems are now recognized as classics, especially "The Bronze Legacy," which includes the line: "Tis a noble gift to be brown, all brown." She also worked as a librarian at Central State College and at the College of Education at Wilberforce University.

Niagara Movement: (1905-1909) A movement that began when 29 angry black intellectuals and professional men met at Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side, in 1905 to seek ways to obtain full "manhood suffrage," the immediate end to discrimination in public accommodations, and access to quality education for all black children. Inspired by African-American radical W.E.B. Du Bois, the group echoed Du Bois' words: "We are men. We will be treated as men. And we shall win." Although dismissed by Booker T. Washington and his followers as dangerously militant, the movement gained widespread support on black college campuses. It merged in 1910 with other African-American and white civil rights groups to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Nixon, Edgar Daniel: (1899-1987) An important leader of the Civil Rights movement in Alabama, E.D. Nixon was the founder and president of the Alabama branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as well as president of the Alabama NAACP. He was among the key leaders of the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955, a pivotal starting point to the Civil Rights Movement. He called the meeting of the black community's activists in Montgomery, which selected Martin Luther King, Jr., as spokesperson for the emerging movement. Unfortunately, Nixon and King later parted ways in disagreement over strategies and tactics.

Norfolk State University: A college founded in 1935 as the Norfolk Unit of Virginia Union University. In 1942, the college became the Norfolk Polytechnic College, and two years later, an Act of the Virginia Legislature mandated that it become a part of Virginia State College. The college was able to pursue an expanded mission in 1956 when another Act of the Legislature enabled it to offer its first bachelor's degree. It was separated from Virginia State College and became fully independent in 1969. Subsequent legislative acts designated the institution as a University and authorized the granting of graduate degrees, and, in 1979, it attained university status. Today, Norfolk State University is proud to be one of the largest predominantly black institutions in the nation--enrolling over 8,300 students.

North Carolina A&T St. University: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University was established for African Americans in 1891 as one of two public land grant universities in the Piedmont District of North Carolina. It originally was known as the Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes, but changed its name to the Negro Agricultural and Technical College in 1915. Its original charter stated the school's mission as providing instruction in agriculture and mechanical arts, and its 150 male students in 1915 were nearly equally divided into elementary and secondary levels of studies. Most students participated in either industrial or agricultural training. Industrial students devoted approximately 18 hours a week to learning various trades, such as carpentry, brick masonry, machinery, blacksmithing, broom making, and woodworking. Agricultural students devoted, in comparison, a few more hours each week to their training in diary, barn, greenhouse, poultry yards, gardens, and fieldwork, much of which included technical application of scientific agriculture to the farm. Elementary students usually worked at these chores ten hours a week. Today, the school is located on 188 acres of land just nine blocks from downtown Greensboro and serves over 7,300 undergraduate students, 86 percent of whom are African American. North Carolina A & T is a fully accredited college with graduate programs at the masters level and a full array of liberal and fine arts, sciences, social sciences, education, and physical education programs. It works in close conjunction with the University of North Carolina -- Greensboro, and is made up of eight individual schools. Entering freshman are required to take six units of English, three units of African-American Studies, and three units of Global Studies The college library contains over half a million volumes as well as official publications and electronic subscriptions. Among the most famous graduates of North Carolina A & T are the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his son, U. S. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. It was while he was a student at NCAT that the senior Jackson became active in the Civil Rights Movement in 1963.

North Carolina Central University: In 1909, James E. Shepherd, a leading black North Carolina educator, founded the National Religious Training School and Chautauqua to train black ministers. He located his new school in a prosperous and thriving black community called "Hayti" on the outskirts of Durham, a place in which freed blacks had begun settling at the end of the Civil War. The school's doors opened in 1910 and Shepherd remained president until his death in 1947, during which the school underwent numerous changes. Struggling to survive with private donations from benefactors such as Mrs. Russell Sage of New York and small tuition fees, the school received a boost in 1923, when it won support from the General Assembly of North Carolina to become the first publicly funded black college in the nation as Durham Normal School. In 1927, it was renamed the North Carolina School for Negroes and dedicated itself to teacher education and the liberal arts. The state provided the funds to expand the school's physical plant as well as its curriculum, adding graduate and professional programs in 1939. In 1947, the school became North Carolina College at Durham--until 1969 when it was renamed North Carolina Central University. It became one of sixteen members of the consolidated University of North Carolina University system in 1972. The school currently enrolls over 5,000 students and offers bachelor's degrees in arts and sciences and graduate programs in law, business, library and information, science, and liberal arts. Bishops Marshall Gilmore of Texas, Bishop Nathaniel L. Linsey of Ohio, Dr. John Wesley Gilbert.

Northwest Ordinance of 1787: After the American Revolution, the new nation was faced with the problem of what to do with the vast wilderness lands that made op the Old Northwest. These lands north of the Ohio River and west of Pennsylvania were claimed by seven of the colonies, and the other six colonies refused to join the Confederation until the seven ceded their land to the Union. When this happened, Congress had to decide how to organize these lands to prepare them for statehood, with the same rights as the original 13 colonies. What followed were three Northwest Ordinances. The first, drafted by Thomas Jefferson and passed by Congress in 1784, divided the region into 16 districts to be granted statehood when their populations reached 20,000. The second ordinance enacted in 1785 provided a means of surveying the lands into townships of 36 square miles, with every other township subdivided into 36 sections of 640 acres each. Each section could be sold to the public at $1 per acre--but only in 640-acre lots, which greatly favored large land companies. The third ordinance, enacted in 1787, established governments for the West and superceded the first ordinance. It allowed for congressionally appointed officials (governor, secretary, and three judges) to govern until the population reached 5000, at which time a legislature could be formed to pass laws. When any district obtained a population of 60,000, it could be admitted to the Union as a state.

The 1787 ordinance guaranteed religious freedom and fundamental civil rights (trial by jury) for the white inhabitants of the districts. Once established, these new states could draft constitutions and operate as they pleased except for two conditions: their governments had to be republican (meaning a representative government) in form and slavery, or involuntary servitude except in punishment for a crime, was prohibited. At the time of its passage, only a few enslaved people lived in the region, and no one thought that many others would be brought there in the future by their slaveholders. Endorsed and partly drafted by Thomas Jefferson, the Norwest Ordinance of 1787 set a precedent whereby the federal government determined whether or not slavery would be allowed in the western regions of the nation. Within a generation, the issue would be raised again and again as new states were formed. Some historians contend that the spread of slavery westward was the key issue that caused the Civil War.