The N.A.A.C.P. hosts “The Negro, The Mob, and the Law” at the Metropolitan Baptist Church.
“greatest event in history of similar occasions”
One hundred years ago today … The New York chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. hosted an open meeting about “the Negro, the Mob, and the Law”–the word “mob” here referring to the violent crowds that perform lynchings, the frequency of which was escalating in the US.
New York Age Feb. 21, 1920, p. 3. Newspapers.com.
The Tulsa Star–based in Tulsa but covering national African American issues–reported that it had been a “remarkably enthusiastic and largely attended mass meeting … pronounced by all who attended it to be the greatest event in history of similar occasions” (“The Negro, the Mob, and the Law Discussed,” Star, February 29, p.1). The speakers included James Weldon Johnson, John Shillady, and William Pickens.
The meeting occurred at the Metropolitan Baptist Church, 128th Street and 7th Avenue, now 151 West 128th Street.
The Metropolitan Baptist Church, 1925. The Schomburg Center, New York Public Library.
The building had been erected over the years 1884-90 for the New York Presbyterian Church. The Metropolitan Baptist Church bought the property in 1918 and owns it still. The site received landmark status in 1981.
The Metropolitan Baptist Church had formed in 1912, one of the first African American congregations in Harlem. For the first six years it met at 120 West 138th Street, which eventually became Liberty Hall, the site of U.N.I.A. headquarters.