The NAACP Texas Conference of Branches organizes and finances civil-rights lawsuits and presses for racial equality through litigation. Texas’ first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP) was established in El Paso in 1915. Texas soon became the largest state representing the NAACP, with thirty-one branches soon grew throughout the state, incorporating over 7,000 members by World War I. In the 1910s and 1920s, high racial tensions and violence against NAACP members resulted in the closure of many state branches. The NAACP Texas State Conference of Branches was founded in 1937 and revitalized the organization in Texas. After World War II, the conference represented over a hundred branches and 30,000 members. In the 1950s and 1960s, the conference legally fought for the desegregation of college, secondary, and elementary education and against discriminatory practices in employment, housing, and the criminal justice system.
Source:
pGillette, Michael L., “National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People.” Handbook of Texas Online. Accessed on April 7, 2011.
Legal documents, correspondence, newspaper articles, newsletters, and a program compose the NAACP Texas Conference of Branches Records, 1953-1973, documenting the history of the NAACP Texas Conference of Branches during the Civil Rights movement. Written requests for legal aid portray cases of discrimination against African-Americans in Texas. Correspondence between Clarence A. Laws, NAACP Southwest Regional Director, and Emerson Marcee, president of the NAACP Texas Conference of Branches discuss organizational activities and attempts to redress instances of discrimination. The collection also includes newspaper articles (1959-1965), conference materials, and issues of the NAACP News Recorder (1967-1968), the official newsletter for the NAACP Texas Conference of Branches.
This collection is open for research use.
NAACP Texas Conference of Branches Records, 1953-1973, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s “History Revealed: Bringing Collections to Light project,” 2009-2011.