A TALK GIVEN AT A MEETING TO RESTORE TIES BETWEEN THE NAACP AND THE NEW YORK SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE
In this time of political and social division two organizations came together to restore their historical relations.
Explanatory note: I have served as a professional leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture since 2008 and have served in a professional position in the Ethical Movement for the past 55 years. Ethical Culture is a humanistic fellowship that is congregationally organized and committed to fostering ethical ideals while not deriving its values from a theological foundation. From its inception in 1876, Ethical Culture has been committed to promoting progressive social justice work in American Society, much of it taking the form of starting causes that evolve into formal, independent institutions. While never large, Ethical Culture has played a disproportionate role in creating such institutions, either alone or in cooperation with others. Among them has been the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
On June 9th,approximately 100 people gathered at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. They came together to reestablish working relations between the two organizations. I was asked to give an address on the origins of the NAACP and the role Ethical Culture played in its creation. For this brief talk, I drew from a talk by Marc Bernstein, former archivist of the New York Society, and “W.E.B.DuBois: Biography of a Race” by the historian David Levering Lewis. What follows is a slightly amended version of the talk.
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Friends, we are here today to reestablish working ties between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
It is appropriate that we meet here because the relations that we seek to reestablish in the moment were effectively present in the beginning.
The Ethical Society can take pride in that it was significantly involved in the very founding of the NAACP, and our members have remained active through much of its history, especially in its early decades.
Arguably, the NAACP was created as a result of a race riot in the summer of 1908. Six people were killed, houses and businesses were burnt, two African Americans were lynched and thousands fled.
What made this riot different was that it took place in Springfield, Illinois, the historic home of Abraham Lincoln, just six months before the centenary of Lincoln's birth. What also made it different is that it received national attention.
William Walling, a socialist and journalist,published a report entitled “Race War in the North” that caught the attention of Mary White Ovington, a famed suffragist and supporter of Black causes. In that article, Walling asked, “What large and powerful body of citizens is ready to come to their aid?” With her conscience inspired, Ovington arranged a meeting with Walling in his New York apartment. They were joined by Dr. Henry Moskowitz, a social worker and a leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. Moskowitz had gained a reputation for his involvement in a range of causes that characterized the activism of the Progressive Movement, from advocating for organized labor to promoting settlement houses. It was the meeting under discussion that marked the origins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The group expanded to include a growing roster of social reformers both Black and white who were determined to initiate a bi-racial campaign to defend African-American rights and to set up a conference to that effect.
They decided to issue a manifesto to put out the call. The statement was launched on February 12th, 1909, the centenary of Lincoln's birth and almost 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The final draftsman of the manifesto was Oswald Garrison Villard, grandson of the famed abolitionist, the founder and editor of The Nation magazine, and a member and former trustee of The New York Society for Ethical Culture.
The manifesto was signed by 69 luminaries, four of whom were leaders of the Ethical Culture Society.
Villard and Ovington were the driving forces, but the towering figure and scholarly credentials of W.E.B. Dubois gave the fledgling effort its heft. I need to mention that DuBois was close to Ethical Culture. Felix Adler, Ethical Culture's founder, invited him to speak several times at the Society, and in 1911, DuBois and Adler journeyed to London together as the American delegates to the first International Race Conference, which Adler had initiated.
Two conferences were held in subsequent months. The second took place at Cooper Union and attracted more than 1000 people, including white and Black social reformers of the day, both men and women together. What was first called the “National Negro Conference” became the NAACP, elected a governing committee of 40, and became a permanent organization. Villard was installed as its treasurer.
At every point along the way, from the first meeting in the New York apartment to the writing of the petition, to support for the petition, to the administration of the NAACP itself, Ethical Culturists played a formative role.
As the NAACP grew, it made efforts to put an end to the hideous crime of lynching, which became a mainstay of DuBois' work with the organization. It was also a centerpiece of the activism of James Weldon Johnson, a prominent figure in African-American arts and politics, who, of course, is best known for having written “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which has become the Black national anthem. What is less well known is that Johnson was a member of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, having joined the Society in 1919, and remained a member for 16 years.
I cannot end this brief look at the cooperation between Ethical Culture and the NAACP without mentioning the extraordinary work of Ethical Culture's most distinguished leader after its founding period, Algernon D. Black.
Al was a tireless activist and a crusader for racial justice. In the 1940s, he became co-chair of the City-wide Citizen's Committee on Harlem, together with Adam Clayton Powell. The Committee placed Blacks in nursing schools, in the city's banks, and in department stores. It was able to get Black doctors admitted to City hospitals and Blacks appointed to the Board of Education. It also abolished the Red Cross's practice of segregating blood.
The Committee then morphed into The New State Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. The Committee succeeded in outlawing segregation in housing that received public funds. Its work led the way to the formation of a National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. Al Black was appointed as a vice-chairman of the NAACP in 1950 and actively served on its board until the late 1960s.
That was now a long time ago, and we are in a different era. As we know, we are in a very ominous moment, wherein our democracy is standing on a precipice. It's a time when, among other retrograde and reactionary trends, there is suppression of voting rights and movements to restore the norms and practices of the Jim Crow era. Hate and fear are used to galvanize these trends.
Therefore, for those who continue to hold out a vision of a progressive vision for America, one suffused with equality and mutual support of all across lines of racial difference, now is the time for the NAACP and The New York Society to come together as we did in the beginning.
Thank you.
Informative history of the relationship between Ethical Culture and the NAACP. Good to call for renewal of this relationship. - Jean Strickholm