Art for Equality. The NAACP's Cultural Campaign for Civil Rights. Civil rights and the struggle for Black equality in the twentieth century.

Jenny Woodley (2014)

A study of the NAACP’s activism in the cultural realm through creative projects from 1910 to the 1960s.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, having dedicated itself to the fight for racial equality since 1909. In openly supporting African American artists, writers and musicians in their creative endeavors, the organization aimed to change the way the public viewed the black community. By overcoming stereotypes and the belief of the majority that African Americans were physically, intellectually, and morally inferior to Whites, the NAACP believed it could begin to defeat racism. Exploring the roles of gender and class in shaping the association’s patronage of the arts, Art for Equality offers an in-depth analysis of the social and cultural climate during a time of radical change in America.