NAACP Mounts National Anti-Lynching Campaign with Investigative Reports

Throughout the 1920s, the NAACP under James Weldon Johnson ran a sustained national anti-lynching campaign combining investigative journalism, legislative lobbying, and public education. The organization sent investigators to lynching sites, published detailed reports, hired lawyers to challenge trials, and maintained the most comprehensive documentation of racial violence in the country. The NAACP's 1919 report '30 Years of Lynching in the United States' documented 3,224 lynchings between 1889 and 1918. In 1920, the organization flew a banner over its New York headquarters reading 'A Man Was Lynched Yesterday' on days following lynchings.