The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is one of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States. Founded in 1909, its mission is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.” The NAACP was instrumental in anti-lynching campaigns of the early 20th century, efforts to outlaw segregation in the mid-20th century, and in the broader Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.