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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 39. Negro Improvement and Protest Organizations - 7. The N.A.A.C.P. National Office
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828 An American Dilemma
bluffing, and it is often successful bluffing. This is said not in criticism but
in sincere admiration.®
From the very beginning, the Association has laid stress on its legal
redress work, and this has always been a most important and, certainly,
the most spectacular part of its activity.®^ The Association takes its stand on
the legal equality of all the citizens of the country stipulated in the Con-
stitution,^ and in most of the laws of the several states of the South and the
North. It brings selected cases of discrimination and segregation to the test
of law suits.
In hundreds of cases, the lawyers of the N.A.A.C.P. have been instru-
mental in saving Negroes from unequal treatment by the courts, sometimes
getting them acquitted when they were sentenced or in danger of being
sentenced on flimsy evidence j
sometimes getting death penalties or other
severe penalties reduced.®^ The frequently successful fights to prevent
the extradition of Negroes from Northern to Southern communities, when
the likelihood of obtaining a fair trial for the Negroes sought could be
shown to be questionable, has proved time and again an especially effective
means of focusing national attention upon the low standards of legal cul-
ture in the South.®® In numerous cases the exclusion of Negroes from grand
and petit juries has been challenged, and the Association shares in establish-
ing precedents by which the principle is now firmly established that the
exclusion of Negroes from jury service is a denial of the equal protection
of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitu-
* Roy Wilkins comments on this point: . the issues on which the N.A.A.C.P. uses
the threat of reprisal by voters are carefully selected out of our long experience with
items we know colored voters will resent at the polls, regardless of party affiliations or
other distracting factors. But it must be remembered that we labor under no illusions
so far as marshalling a complete bloc of Negro voters as such against any particular
candidate or proposal. Wc know that party affiliation comes first with many colored
people, just as it does with other racial groups. They are loyal. Democratic workers, for
instance, first of all. We know that job-holding, or the hope of winning jobs will influence
the vote more than consideration for racial ideals. We know that some communities will
vote for segregated Negro schools on the excuse that only through those schools can they
get jobs for their daughters as teachers. In other words, there is no such thing as a purely
Negro vote. Nevertheless, on some broad questions, grievously aggravated in some com-
munity or by some politician, it is possible to swing a goodly section of the Negro vote
in the way it should go, despite other factors operating.” (Memorandum [August xi,
1942].)
® There is an interesting story from the First World War told by James Weldon Johnson.
Du Bois, wVvo was then editor of The Cririx, had been to the front in F’rance and had a
good deal to say about the treatment of the Negro soldier:
‘‘The utterances of Dr. Du Bois xn The Crisis^ the organ of the association, brought a
Vi oSsKfc liom ot iV Department, oi justice-, in reply to tbe query*. ‘Just
tvhat ia this orffanization hghting for?’ Dr. Du Bois said: *We are £ghting for ths
enforcement of the Constitution of the United State,.- This was an ultimate condensatio.n
of the program of the association.” (Black Manhattan^ p, 247.)
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