Oswald Villard, the NAACP and The Nation (Page 2)

In 1909, when the founders of the NAACP needed help organizing their new civil rights group, they reached out to Oswald Garrison Villard, The Nation's future editor and owner.

His challenge brought instant response from Mary White Ovington, a social worker among Negroes in New York City. She was a Socialist, a Unitarian and the descendant of an abolitionist. She prevailed upon Walling to hold a meeting at his apartment early in January, 1909. They were joined by Dr. Henry Moskovitz, another New York social worker. Miss Ovington later reminisced, "We like to remember that of the three people present, one was the descendant of an old-time abolitionist, the second was a Jew, and the third a Southerner."

At the first informal gathering it was decided that Lincoln's Birthday should mark the opening of their campaign, and it was agreed that Villard should be invited to join the group. Miss Ovington knew Villard and had written articles for the Evening Post. Walling had already enlisted the support of his friend, Charles Edward Russell, a popular magazine writer and fellow-Socialist whose father had been editor of an abolitionist newspaper in Iowa. Almost immediately, on the initiative of Miss Ovington, the group was made biracial with the addition of two prominent colored clergymen, Bishop Alexander Walters and the Reverend W. H. Brooks.

Villard accepted the invitation with enthusiasm. Here was the opportunity to carry out his idea of a defense committee. He plunged into rewriting the rough draft of the call for a conference and he asked his uncle, William Lloyd Garrison, of Boston, to endorse it, assuring him there was "nothing in it that a Garrison should hesitate to sign."

In spite of Villard's strenuous efforts to obtain publicity for his manifesto, he was disappointed by the reaction of the New York press. Nevertheless, the group continued to expand. Among those who attended early meetings to plan for a "Conference on the Status of the Negro" were John Haynes Holmes, William H. Bulkley, Alexander Irving, Anna Garlin Spencer, J. C. Phelps-Stokes, Helen Stokes, Stephen S. Wise and Ray Stannard Baker.

The conference was held at the end of May, 1909. Discussions and lectures centered on the rights of the Negro to political equality (without which he could not raise his economic or social status); methods for obtaining civil and political rights through organization, and scientific evidence refuting the prevailing popular theory of Negro racial inferiority.

The direction of the conference was largely in Villard's hands. In his speech to the open meeting, he elaborated on his idea of an endowed committee, and at the closed business session at the end of the conference he presented a practical outline of his plan for departments of legal advice, social investigation, publicity, political propaganda and education. The resolutions passed by the meeting to give publicity to its purposes were to have been drafted in advance by Walling, but were actually rewritten and completed by Villard while the preamble was being read to the assembly. The most important resolution called for a Committee of Forty to set up a permanent organization and to arrange for another convention in 1910, Again it was Villard who had drawn up the list of names to fill this committee. The nominating committee, however, made drastic changes in an attempt to avoid aligning the Committee of Forty with either radicals or conservatives, omitting the names of Washington and his supporters as well as those of Washington's severest critics.

Disagreement on the floor of the meeting over the resolutions and the nominations was due partly to deep mistrust by the colored people of the motives of the whites and partly to factional strife among themselves. The suspicion and hostility reached such proportions that at one point Villard and Walling seriously considered withdrawing the whole plan and continuing the work as they saw fit.

Villard had personally invited Washington to attend the conference, but after making it clear that the new movement would be aggressive in its fight for Negro rights, he tactfully made it possible for the Negro leader to decline the invitation. Washington acknowledged the need for the projected organization, but pointed out that because his own work was in the South, he must as far as possible keep himself free of criticism. Such was his influence on loyal Negroes and on prominent whites in sympathy with his point of view that they avoided the conference when he failed to give it public approval.

By autumn of 1909, the Committee of Forty had begun to plan the next annual meeting in New York.

Villard became temporary chairman in November, succeeding Walling, who had resigned. Little headway was made during the fall and winter. Meetings were poorly attended; some prominent members resigned because of Washington's disapproval; funds were lacking and a suitable treasurer could not be found; no speakers were secured for the conference; and Villard's plan of organization had not been implemented. The only definite step was the hiring of a professional worker. Returning from a vacation at the end of February, 1910, Villard realized that his project was near disintegration. Within ten days he launched a series of special meetings, set up a Preliminary Committee on Permanent Organization with himself as chairman, settled the main outline of the conference with "Disfranchisement" as its theme, and secured contributions to ease the financial situation. Villard himself donated the organizer's salary for several months and provided office space in the Evening Post building.

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