The Slow Death of the NAACP: From Thurgood Marshall to Democratic Party Errand Boy

There was a time when the letters N-A-A-C-P struck terror into the hearts of segregationists, when the organization’s legal team was the most feared force in American jurisprudence, when its name was whispered in Black barbershops and white statehouses alike with a mixture of reverence and dread that only genuine power can produce. That time has passed. What remains is a shell — a letterhead, a brand, an annual convention with corporate sponsors and predictable keynote speeches — and the distance between what the NAACP was and what the NAACP has become is not merely a story of institutional decline. It is a parable about what happens when an organization designed to fight for a people becomes, instead, an instrument of a political party, and in the process loses the capacity to fight for anyone at all.

The founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909 was an act of radical audacity. W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Mary White Ovington, and their compatriots looked at a nation where Black men were being lynched at a rate of more than one hundred per year and decided that the law itself — the very instrument of oppression — could be turned into a weapon of liberation. This was not a protest organization in the modern sense. It was a legal army. Its weapon was the Constitution, its battlefield was the courtroom, and its soldiers were among the most brilliant attorneys in American history.

The Giant That Was

The NAACP’s legal victories read like a textbook on how to dismantle a system of oppression through sheer intellectual force. Buchanan v. Warley in 1917, which struck down racial zoning ordinances. Smith v. Allwright in 1944, which declared white-only primaries unconstitutional. Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, which invalidated racially restrictive housing covenants. And then the crown jewel, the case that changed America: Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, argued by Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first Black Supreme Court Justice, and which declared that separate was inherently unequal and that the constitutional scaffolding of American apartheid was, at last, illegal.

These were not symbolic victories. They were structural transformations of American law, achieved through preparation, brilliance, and a strategic patience that the current generation of activists would do well to study. Marshall spent years building the legal record, case by case, establishing precedents in lower courts, training local attorneys in NAACP methods, constructing an edifice of legal argument so comprehensive that when the Supreme Court finally ruled, it had no intellectually honest alternative. At its peak in the late 1940s and 1950s, the NAACP boasted over 450,000 members and more than 1,600 local branches. It was the largest, most effective civil rights organization in the world.

“Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”
— Thurgood Marshall

The organization was formidable precisely because it was independent. It served no party. It answered to no political machine. When Republicans failed Black people, the NAACP fought them. When Democrats — who were, lest we forget, the party of segregation through most of the organization’s early history — obstructed civil rights legislation, the NAACP fought them too. Its loyalty was not to donkeys or elephants but to the constitutional rights of Black Americans, and that independence was the source of its power.

The Long Decline

The erosion was gradual, as all catastrophic institutional failures are. After the legislative victories of the 1960s — the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — the NAACP faced an existential question that it has never satisfactorily answered: what does a civil rights organization do when the civil rights it was founded to secure have been legally guaranteed? The answer, tragically, was not to evolve into an organization focused on economic empowerment, educational excellence, or community development. The answer was to become a voter mobilization arm of the Democratic Party.

The membership numbers tell the story with brutal clarity. From the peak of over 450,000 in the mid-twentieth century, membership declined steadily through the 1970s and 1980s. By the early 2000s, it had fallen to approximately 300,000. Internal financial crises compounded the decline. In 2007, the NAACP announced it was cutting its staff by 40 percent due to a budget shortfall. In 2008, reports surfaced of nearly $3 million in debt. The organization that had once employed the finest legal minds in the country was struggling to keep the lights on.

Meanwhile, the financial scandals accumulated like silt in a once-mighty river. Former president Bruce Gordon resigned in 2007 after only 19 months, citing disagreements with the board over the organization’s direction. His predecessor, Kweisi Mfume, had departed amid allegations of improper relationships with staff members. The Baltimore headquarters became a revolving door of leaders, each arriving with promises of renewal and departing amid the same dysfunction they had inherited. The NAACP’s annual budget, roughly $30 million in recent years, is dwarfed by the budgets of organizations with narrower missions and broader impact.

School Choice and the Betrayal of Black Children

Perhaps nowhere is the NAACP’s transformation from independent advocate to partisan appendage more visible than in its position on school choice. In 2016, the organization passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools. This position was taken despite the fact — and it is a fact, documented by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University — that Black students in urban charter schools gain, on average, the equivalent of 59 additional days of learning in math and 44 additional days in reading compared to their peers in traditional public schools.

The NAACP’s opposition to charter schools aligns perfectly with the position of teachers’ unions, which are among the largest donors to the Democratic Party. It does not align with the interests of Black parents, who have consistently expressed support for school choice in polling data. A 2019 survey by the journal Education Next found that 56% of Black respondents supported charter schools, compared to only 34% who opposed them. The NAACP, ostensibly the voice of Black America, chose the position favored by the teachers’ unions over the position favored by Black parents. And it did so while Black children in traditional public schools in cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and St. Louis were testing at proficiency rates below 15% in reading and mathematics.

Think about what this means. The organization that argued Brown v. Board of Education — the organization that told the Supreme Court of the United States that every Black child deserved an equal education — is now actively working to keep Black children trapped in failing schools because the political party it serves depends on the support of the unions that run those schools. Thurgood Marshall did not spend decades building a legal arsenal to dismantle segregation so that seventy years later, the organization he served would fight to prevent Black parents from choosing a better school for their children.

The Platinum Plan and the Politics of Reflexive Rejection

In 2020, during the presidential campaign, the Trump administration released what it called the Platinum Plan — a $500 billion investment proposal specifically targeting Black communities. The plan included $150 billion in capital access for Black-owned businesses and communities through lending institutions and community development financial institutions. It proposed $39 billion in additional funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It included the designation of the KKK and Antifa as terrorist organizations, the creation of 500,000 new Black-owned businesses, and 3 million new jobs in Black communities through opportunity zones and regulatory reform. It called for making Juneteenth a national holiday — which, it should be noted, was subsequently accomplished. And it proposed significant criminal justice reform, building on the First Step Act that had already been signed into law in 2018.

One may argue about the feasibility of these proposals. One may question the sincerity of their author. One may point out, correctly, that campaign promises are not policy and that the details of implementation were thin. All of these are legitimate criticisms. But here is what the NAACP did: it dismissed the entire plan as “a shameless attempt to win over Black voters.” Then-president Derrick Johnson called it a “feeble” effort that amounted to nothing more than “lip service.”

And what was the NAACP’s counter-proposal? What was the organization’s own $500 billion plan for Black economic empowerment? What alternative blueprint did it offer for creating half a million Black-owned businesses, or for directing capital into underserved communities, or for funding HBCUs at levels that might begin to approach equity?

There was none. There was no counter-proposal. There was no alternative economic plan. There was only the reflexive rejection of anything associated with the wrong political party, followed by silence, followed by a voter registration drive for the right political party. This is not advocacy. This is not civil rights leadership. This is errand-running, and the errands are not being run on behalf of Black people.

The Party-Line Problem

The pattern is consistent and damning. On issue after issue, the NAACP’s positions are indistinguishable from the Democratic National Committee’s platform. Gun control, immigration, climate policy, healthcare — the NAACP does not arrive at its positions through an independent analysis of what best serves Black Americans. It adopts the positions of its preferred party and then reverse-engineers a civil rights justification for them. This is the opposite of how the organization functioned under Marshall, under Roy Wilkins, under the leaders who made the NAACP feared precisely because no one could predict whose ox it would gore next.

Consider the organization’s position on voter identification laws. The NAACP has consistently opposed voter ID requirements, calling them a form of voter suppression. Yet polling consistently shows that a majority of Black Americans support voter ID laws. A 2021 Monmouth University poll found that 62% of Black respondents favored requiring a photo ID to vote. The NAACP’s position on this issue does not reflect the views of the community it claims to represent. It reflects the position of the Democratic Party, which has calculated that voter ID laws would disadvantage its coalition.

This is what captured advocacy looks like. When an organization’s positions on every major issue align perfectly with a single political party, it is not an independent voice. It is a subsidiary. And a subsidiary cannot negotiate on behalf of its people because it has already given away the only thing that gives a constituency leverage: the possibility of going elsewhere.

What Corporate Sponsorship Bought

Follow the money, as the journalists say, and the NAACP’s transformation becomes even clearer. The organization’s Image Awards ceremony is sponsored by major corporations. Its annual convention features corporate exhibitors and sponsors whose names read like a Fortune 500 roster. These relationships are not inherently corrupt, but they create a dependency that constrains the organization’s willingness to take positions that might alienate its benefactors. An NAACP that depended entirely on the $15 and $25 membership dues of half a million engaged Black citizens would be accountable to those citizens. An NAACP that depends on corporate sponsorships and foundation grants is accountable to the boardrooms and program officers that write the checks.

The NAACP Foundation’s 990 filings reveal an organization that spends significantly on galas, conventions, and administrative costs. While precise figures vary by year, the ratio of program spending to overhead has been a recurring point of criticism from watchdog organizations. This is an organization whose founding members risked their lives — Ida B. Wells received death threats for her anti-lynching journalism, and NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers was assassinated in his own driveway in 1963 — and it has evolved into an organization whose most visible public activity is an awards show on a cable network.

What a Revitalized NAACP Could Be

The tragedy is not that the NAACP exists. The tragedy is that it exists as a shadow of what it could be. Because the need for a powerful, independent, legally sophisticated organization fighting for Black Americans has not diminished. It has intensified. The wealth gap between Black and white families has widened, not narrowed, over the past fifty years. The median Black family holds approximately $24,100 in wealth compared to $188,200 for the median white family — a ratio that is worse today than it was in 1968. Black homeownership rates have stagnated. Black business formation, while growing, still lags dramatically behind other demographic groups. The criminal justice system, despite the First Step Act and other reforms, continues to produce racial disparities at every stage.

A revitalized NAACP would begin by declaring its independence from both political parties — not as a symbolic gesture but as a strategic imperative. It would establish a legal division modeled on Marshall’s original team, staffed with the best attorneys available, and it would litigate not for symbolic victories but for structural changes in education, housing, and economic access. It would develop a comprehensive economic platform — the kind of document that actually specifies dollar amounts, timelines, and mechanisms — and it would present that platform to every candidate, in every party, and extract binding commitments in exchange for its support.

It would take positions on school choice based not on what the teachers’ unions want but on what the data says about outcomes for Black children. It would evaluate proposals like the Platinum Plan not based on who proposed them but on what they contain, and it would counter-propose where the proposals fall short rather than simply dismissing them. It would rebuild its membership base by demonstrating, through action, that it is once again the most effective advocate for Black advancement in the nation — that joining the NAACP is not a nostalgic gesture but an investment in an organization that produces results.

This is not an impossible vision. It is what the NAACP was for the first fifty years of its existence. The question is whether the current leadership has the courage to recover the independence that Marshall and his generation embodied, or whether the organization will continue its slow descent into irrelevance, issuing press releases that no one reads in defense of positions that no one asked Black people about, while the communities it was created to serve wait for a champion that remembers how to fight.

The letters still mean something. Not because of what the organization does today, but because of what it once did, and because the need for what it once was has never been greater. Somewhere in the archives of the Library of Congress, there are the legal briefs that Thurgood Marshall filed in Brown v. Board — documents so brilliant, so meticulously constructed, so relentless in their logic that they changed the meaning of the Constitution itself. Those briefs were written under the banner of the NAACP. They were paid for by the dues of Black sharecroppers and Pullman porters and domestic workers who sent their dollars to an organization they believed would fight for them without compromise and without allegiance to anyone but them. Those people deserved what the NAACP gave them. Their grandchildren deserve no less. And what they are getting, at this moment, is immeasurably less — not because the task is harder, but because the organization that was built to do it has forgotten what it was for.