Here’s to the NAACP.

One hundred years ago, on Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in New York City. It is an anniversary of singular historical importance.

With a black president today, people may have a hard time wrapping their minds around the racism of that era.

In 1909, the country had imposed a system of racial apartheid on black Americans, who were relegated to second-class citizenship.

In 1909, black Americans in the South could not vote, and blacks all over the nation were excluded from employment, an equal education, access to credit and the right to purchase homes except in all-black areas.

In 1909, vigilante violence was a constant threat to black Americans. Thousands of black men were lynched in the United States from the end of the Civil War well into the 20th century. It was, in fact, the violent Springfield, Ill., race riot of the summer of 1908 that proved to be the motivating event that caused 60 men and women, blacks and whites, to bring the NAACP into existence.

From the very beginning, the NAACP boasted impressive goals. Its charter delineated them: “To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.”

The NAACP utilized the country’s democratic tradition to fight for change. It circulated petitions, filed lawsuits, engaged in lobbying and broadcast its views through its influential paper The Crisis.

In 1917, the NAACP organized its famous silent march down New York City’s Fifth Avenue to protest the failure of the federal government to pass an anti-lynching law. Fifteen thousand people participated in the march, which drew international attention.

But its legal work may be its most impressive accomplishment. From 1909-1944, the organization won 19 cases that came before the U.S. Supreme Court seeking equality. In 1935, the organization successfully challenged the University of Maryland Law School’s color bar policy. In 1944, it overturned the Democratic Party’s white primary system in Texas. In 1948, NAACP lawyers had the enforcement of racial covenants in housing declared unconstitutional. And in 1954, the NAACP prevailed in the landmark Brown v. Board school integration case.

Civil disobedience is part of the NAACP legacy as well, despite the fact that the organization did not always embrace it as a tactic. In December 1955, NAACP member Rosa Parks refused to obey a Jim Crow bus law in Montgomery, Ala., and was arrested. Parks’ action triggered the civil rights movement. In addition, members of the NAACP Youth Council started the sit-in movement in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960 when they demanded service at a segregated lunch counter.

The list of individuals who served the NAACP over the years is an impressive one: W.E.B. Du Bois, the legendary civil rights strategist, was a founder of the organization and the first editor of The Crisis; civil rights activist Roy Wilkins succeeded Du Bois as the editor of The Crisis; James Weldon Johnson, the writer, songwriter, lawyer, and politician, served as assistant secretary; and today, Julian Bond, veteran of the civil rights fights of the 1960s, serves as chairman of the board.

The NAACP is still fighting the good fight, and it deserves our gratitude for helping to make our country a place where a black man could become president.

Brian Gilmore, a poet and a lawyer, lives in Takoma Park, Md. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.