When Kyndell A. Reid, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Mid-Manhattan Branch, was looking for new office space and a meeting location for branch members, a suggestion from Marlene Williamson caught her attention.
Williamson, a long-term NAACP member, also serves as the director of external partnerships at the social justice-oriented New York Society for Ethical Culture (NYSEC). She knew that, in the past, both organizations had worked together for the same goals. Williamson decided to spearhead an effort to have the branch move its offices into the building NYSEC owns on Central Park West.
The NAACP’s Mid-Manhattan Branch needed a new location after selling its former Upper West Side site at 270 West 96th Street in 2021. The Mid-Manhattan Branch covers the area between 34th Street and 110th Street, river to river.
“When the building was sold,” Reid explained, “we were kind of displaced for a little while. We were working out of other offices, and we were having our meetings at various places. But, in June, there was a reacquaintance with the NAACP and the New York Ethical Society. We got together, and we basically kind of joined and formed a bond at that point, and conversations started happening. Ethical Culture was right there in our catchment area. And based on the history of the New York Society of Ethical Culture, it just made sense to come back to that building.”
Established by Dr. Felix Adler in 1876, NYSEC started as a movement to promote ethical and moral behavior in society, and as Black Civil Rights leaders gained prominence in the early 20th century, the organization hosted influential figures like Booker T. Washington, James Weldon Johnson, and W.E.B. Du Bois and endorsed the creation of the NAACP in 1909.
Following several incidents of civil unrest at the turn of the century, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth on Feb. 12, 1909, was seen as an opportunity to initiate a new civil rights movement. Oswald Villard, the editor of the New York Evening Post who later became publisher of the Nation magazine, was also a NYSEC member. Villard was enlisted to write the “Call” for a national conference to promote racial equality.
Villard, notes Dr. Richard Koral, the current leader of NYSEC, “not only had the chops to write a moving petition that called for a movement, but he also had the capacity to really generate a lot of interest for it through his newspaper. Fifty three prominent people in New York City signed it, including several New York Society Ethical Culture leaders. And when it was formed, several Ethical Culture leaders were part of the founding group and then on the first board of trustees for the NAACP.
“There was a lot of movement within our society at that time to support this new organization. And over the years, there’s been a lot of cooperation and a lot of commonalities in things that we’ve done. One other leader in the mid-20th century, who was the vice president of the national NAACP, James Weldon Johnson, co-wrote ‘Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.’ He was also a member of the Ethical Culture movement for many years and on our board. So, there was a lot of mutuality in olden times. What drove Marlene [Williamson to push for the two groups to relink] was that a lot of these connections had kind of attenuated. We weren’t really in each other’s conversations enough. It was her idea to bring us together, and we realized the mutual opportunities that were before us. And that’s why we did this move.”
The NAACP and NYSEC have already begun working together due to their similar committee-based governing structures. Williamson notes that, “After we had a big celebratory reacquaintance, we put together an agenda to see how we were going to work together moving forward. And since our committees are similar, we have several committees dedicated to increasing voter participation because we do a lot of work with the three campuses of NYCHA’s Amsterdam Houses. So, we’ve already started to collaborate.”