- Person
- Joel Spingarn
- Lived
- 1875–1939
- Field
- Civil rights & criticism
- From
- American
The story
In 1910 Joel Spingarn was a Columbia University professor of comparative literature and one of America's leading literary critics. Born in New York in 1875 to a prosperous Jewish family, he was also keenly interested in politics and had run for Congress as a Republican in 1908. That year he read a report about a Black tenant farmer in Arkansas who had killed his white landlord in self-defense. The farmer had been threatened with mob violence and tortured by police in an effort to force a confession.
Spingarn was moved to act. He believed that white Americans would correct injustice once they knew about it. In the fall of 1910 he contributed $100 to the man's defense fund, and the case inspired him to support the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Oswald Garrison Villard nominated him for the NAACP's executive committee, and W. E. B. Du Bois seconded the nomination.
Spingarn later said that, horrified as he was by the violence directed at Black Americans, he was even more upset by the contempt with which educated Black men were treated by white society. The fight for racial justice became his life's work. His involvement deepened just as his academic career ended: soon afterwards he was dismissed from Columbia after a dispute with its president, leaving him free to give the cause his full energy.
Early in 1911 he was acting as an officer of the NAACP's New York Vigilance Committee, and when a theatre refused tickets to a group of Black men he accompanied, he helped the committee win a lawsuit against its management. He went on to chair the NAACP's board from 1913 to 1919, serve as its treasurer from 1919 to 1930 and become its second president from 1930. In 1914 he created the Spingarn Medal for outstanding achievement by a Black American.
He would serve the NAACP for nearly three decades, until his death in 1939, and his will provided for the medal to be awarded in perpetuity.
Why it matters
A single act of conscience drew Spingarn into a lifetime of leadership in the struggle for Black civil rights.
About Joel Spingarn
Literary scholar who became one of the NAACP’s first Jewish leaders, its chairman, treasurer and second president, and founder of the Spingarn Medal for African American achievement.
More about Joel Spingarn
- Joel Spingarn helped found Harcourt, Brace and CompanyIn 1919 Joel Spingarn helped found the publishing house Harcourt, Brace and Company, served as its literary adviser and edited its 25-volume European Library.
- Joel Spingarn called for a “new criticism” in 1910In a 1910 Columbia lecture called The New Criticism, Joel Spingarn argued that each work of art should be judged afresh, on its own terms.
- Joel Spingarn led the NAACP and created the Spingarn MedalJoel Spingarn, a Jewish literary scholar, led the NAACP for decades and in 1914 created the Spingarn Medal for Black achievement, still awarded today.
- Joel Spingarn launched the New Abolition campaignIn 1913 Joel Spingarn began a campaign he called the New Abolition, reviving the spirit of the abolitionists and spreading the NAACP to new cities.
- Joel Spingarn lost his job defending a colleagueIn 1910 Joel Spingarn offered a faculty resolution supporting a Columbia professor summarily dismissed by the university's president, and was himself dismissed weeks later.
- Joel Spingarn helped win a suit against a segregated theaterIn 1911 Joel Spingarn accompanied Black men to a New York theater that refused them tickets, then helped the NAACP's Vigilance Committee win a lawsuit against the management.
- Joel Spingarn outfitted Howard students who enlistedDuring World War I Joel Spingarn trained as an officer, served as a major and donated uniforms for one hundred Howard University students who enlisted.
Sources
- Joel Spingarn Jewish Virtual Library
- Joel Elias Spingarn EBSCO Research Starters
- Joel Elias Spingarn Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.