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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as a bi-racial organization to advance justice for African Americans by W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, and Moorfield Storey.
Dr. Lillie Carroll Jackson, a native of Baltimore, headed the Baltimore branch of the NAACP for 35 years and for much of this time her home on Eutaw Place was a hub of civil rights organizing and activism.
Lillie Carroll became known as a champion of her people and the heart of the civil rights movement in Maryland. She quickly grew chapter’s membership from 100 in 1935 to 17,600 in 1946, making Baltimore one of the largest chapters in the country.
Under her leadership, the Baltimore branch initiated and won legal cases which opened the classrooms of the University of Maryland and other publicly financed institutions to those who had been denied admittance on the basis of race. Her advocacy efforts included supporting the “Buy Where You Can Work” campaign to promote integrated businesses and boycott segregated ones (1931); leading efforts to register black voters and shift in city politics (1942); and pursuing the integration of Baltimore’s schools after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954). Known as Dr. Jackson after receiving an honorary degree
from Morgan State University in 1956, she also served on the NAACP’s national board. For the 35 years she led the Baltimore NAACP, she never earned a paycheck, using her rental properties as her sole source of income.