This book is based mainly on firsthand source material and supplemented by secondhand sources. First and most important to my analysis were the Papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), located at the National Library of Congress in Washington, DC. I conducted a small portion of the research using the microfiche film while a graduate student at Princeton University but the bulk of the research was undertaken through numerous visits to the Library of Congress. The NAACP Papers are tremendous in volume and represent the largest single collection ever acquired by the Library of Congress. The entire collection contains around 5 million items dating from 1909 to 2003. It is truly a rich resource that speaks to the careful records kept by the NAACP and the librarians who have dutifully protected and preserved the NAACP Papers over the years. Of particular importance in the NAACP Papers to the writing of this book were National Board of Director Minutes, Annual Reports, Special Correspondence file, NAACP Visual file, American Fund for Public Service file, Arkansas General file, and the Anti-Lynching file. Together, these archival materials helped me piece together a story, the important players involved, and to understand the interworkings of the NAACP.