Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation’s most recognized and active grass-roots civil rights organization. A call was made on President Lincoln’s centennial birthday on February 12, 1909 for a national conference on the plight of Negroes in America, which included “discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.” They wanted to bring national attention to the blatant disenfranchisement of the Negro.