National President, Moorfield Storey, Boston; Chairman of the Executive Committee, William English Walling; Treasurer, John E. Milholland; Disbursing Treasurer, Oswald Garrison Villard; Executive Secretary, Frances Blascoer; Director of Publicity and Research, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois.
The securing of a sufficient financial support to warrant our calling Dr. DuBois from Atlanta University into an executive office in the Association was the most important work of the second conference.
When Dr. DuBois came to us we were brought closely in touch with an organization of colored people, formed in 1905 at Niagara and known as the Niagara Movement. This organization had held important conferences at Niagara, Harpers Ferry, and Boston, and had attempted a work of legal redress along very much the lines upon which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was working. Its platform, as presented in a statement in 1905, ran as follows:
The abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color.
The recognition of the principle of human brotherhood as a practical present creed.
The recognition of the highest and best training as the monopoly of no class or race.
United effort to realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership.
In 1910 it had conducted important civil rights cases and had in its membership some of the ablest colored lawyers in the country, with Mr. W. Ashbie Hawkins, who has since worked with our Association, on the Baltimore Segregation acts, as its treasurer.
The Niagara Movement, hampered as it was by lack of funds and by a membership confined to one race only, continued to push slowly on, but when the larger possibilities of this new Association were clear, the members of the Niagara Movement were advised to join, as the platforms were practically identical. Many of the most prominent members of the Niagara Movement thus brought their energy and ability into the service of the Association, and eight are now serving on its Board of Directors.
Our history, after 1910, may be read in our annual reports, and in the numbers of THE CRISIS. We opened two offices in the _Evening Post_ building. With Dr. DuBois came Mr. Frank M. Turner, a Wilberforce graduate, who has shown great efficiency in handling our books. In November of 1910 appeared the first number of THE CRISIS, with Dr. DuBois as editor, and Mary Dunlop MacLean, whose death has been the greatest loss the Association has known, as managing editor. Our propaganda work was put on a national footing, our legal work was well under way and we were in truth, a National Association, pledged to a nation-wide work for justice to the Negro race.