W.E.B. Du Bois, the NAACP and _Crisis Magazine: A Record of the Darker Races_

“My new title showed that I had modified my program of research but by no means abandoned it […] This new field of endeavor represented a distinct break from my previous purely scientific program. While “research’ was still among my duties, there were in fact no funds for such work. My chief efforts were devoted to editing and publishing the Crisis, which I founded on my own responsibility and over the protests of my associates. With the Crisis, I essayed a new role of interpreting to the world the hindrances and aspirations of American Negroes.”-William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, _The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois_(1968)

Although the newly formed NAACP final offer to W.E.B. Du Bois in 1910 did not include funding for a research program similar to the one he headed up at Atlanta University, it became evident that Du Bois finally found an institution that could satisfactorily sponsor a long-term utilitarian periodical for reforming behavior in the African American community as well as protesting on behalf of it. In this regard, this unique alliance was surprisingly beneficial to the organization’s plans as well. In addition to the fact that NAACP leaders could find no one better qualified than Du Bois to oversee field research and writings about racial injustices and atrocities perpetuated against American Negroes, his selection also helped facilitate the organization’s other concerns to advance the Negro race by ‘fitting this people’ for successful participation in American society.

To be sure, protecting Negroes from lynching, discrimination and injustice was the organization’s chief intentions throughout its institutional history. The newly formed 1909 National Negro Committee—the NAACP’s former designation—made it unmistakably clear that its efforts were to be directed against persons or groups who participated in or indirectly supported a systematic practice of racial oppression directed toward the American Negro. Yet a closer examination of the committee’s initial 1909 purpose statement also suggests that its goals were not merely confined to eliminating Negro oppression.

The 1909 National Negro Committee’s founding document went on to assert: “The nearest hope lies in the immediate and patiently continued enlightenment of the people who have been inveigled in a campaign of oppression.” Although the NAACP’s protest efforts against racist institutional practices in American society are a well-known backdrop for Du Bois’s more vituperative protest writings appearing in Crisis, the group’s 1909 declaration actually represents a two-tiered approach for solving African American social problems. The first tier demanded a cessation of racial persecution against blacks, while the second tier included reformatory efforts within the African American community to which Du Bois would use the Crisis to also address.