The members also
insisted that it was time to launch a concerted attack against
lynching and other kinds of mob violence.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People was officially established in 1910 with Moorefield Storey
as its president. W. E. B. DuBois was the only black on its board
and served as its director of publicity and research. Most blacks
and whites at the time believed that the N.A.A.C.P. was
irresponsible for including so many of the members of the Niagara
Movement in its membership. Monroe Trotter and a few others,
however, held that an interracial organization such as the
N.A.A.C.P. could not be trusted to take a strong enough stand on
important issues, and they refused to cooperate with it. The
N.A.A.C.P. began publication of its own Journal, Crisis, which
was a basic part of its informational program. Crisis was
edited by W. E. B. DuBois.
The most important work of the Association was done by its legal
department. Its lawyers attacked the legal devices used by some
states to disenfranchise Negroes. In 1915, the Supreme Court
declared, in Guinn v.
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