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NEWS TIP: NAACP's 100th Anniversary Should Celebrate Sacrifices of Ordinary People, Duke Historian Says

Behind a hero such as Thurgood Marshall are lesser-known people such as preacher J.A. Delaine and farmer Levi Pearson

As the NAACP turns 100 on Feb. 12, the civil rights organization should celebrate the election of President Barack Obama, but also remember that such historic triumphs would not have been possible if not for the courage of ordinary people, a Duke  University historian said.

"The NAACP reflects the ongoing synergy between everyday people and movement leaders that made it possible to turn our country around," said William Chafe, a professor of history at Duke and author of "The Rise and Fall of the American Century: The United States from 1890-2010."

"There would have been no ‘Brown v. Board of Education' decision were it not for a preacher named J.A. Delaine who was willing to persist through his church and his home being burned down to launch the ‘Briggs v. Elliott' case in South Carolina, or a farmer named Levi Pearson who was denied fertilizer and seed once he announced that his name would go on the Briggs court suit," said Chafe, a former president of the Organization of American Historians.

"Thurgood Marshall could never have become the national hero he became without these ordinary people," he said.

The election of Obama has particular resonance for the NAACP because of similarities between the new president and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. DuBois, said Chafe, whose "The Unfinished Journey" is a standard textbook in modern American college history courses.

"DuBois was a Fisk and Harvard graduate who was invited to have dinner at a Tennessee school superintendent's house -- and then was told to eat in the kitchen while his host ate in the dining room," he said. "Today, he would feel a special kinship with another intellectual who graduated from Harvard and who happens to be our new president."