The NAACP or the National Association For the Advancement of Colored People, is a nonpartisan civil rights organization that has been around for a number of years. Founded in Baltimore, Maryland in the year 1909 (one year after the Springfield Illinois Race Riots) as a "response to the ongoing violence against Black people around the country," it is "the largest and most pre-eminent civil rights organization in the nation." Its founding members include W.E.B Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Mary White Ovington, and many more.