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scared to join the NAACP - because we were doing all these radical things,
you know, challenging school segregation, challenging this, and challenging
that. So she felt also that they would teach the colored people to stand up
for their own neighborhoods where they had investments and keep these
taverns out. And so these neighborhood associations, backed by the
NAACP, would go to court, and we would provide the lawyers, and the like.
And they also became wonderful assets in our voter registration campaigns.
Now the liquor boards were under the state, and the members were
appointed by the governor. She went with many groups to Annapolis to
protest. We found that where there wasn't much money being paid, we won.
But the bottom line was that where a lot of money was being put out to get a
tavern in whatever neighborhood, they usually got the license. It was a big
battle, and then we would appeal it. We won a number of them in court, but
it was an arduous, hard struggle to keep our own neighborhoods, residential
neighborhoods, free of taverns near our churches and our schools.
Finally, they adopted a policy that a tavern couldn't be within a
hundred and fifty feet of a school. You know, a hundred and fifty feet is not
very far."^
In their first few years, the neighborhood protective associations organized
not only against of liquor outlets, but also against the placement of barbershops,
funeral parlors, horse stables, a rag factory, and a mattress factory in Black
residential neighborhoods. The relationship between the NAACP and the
neighborhood associations was obviously close (although Clarence Mitchell later
remembered some NAACP forces were initially less than happy with these
organizations). The neighborhood associations nonetheless had a life of their own
and were grassroots organizations; the local NAACP acted as their sponsor, their
advocate, and, in the broadest sense, gave them direction. These neighborhood
associations became well known nationally: in 1943, when Tfie Crisis profiled LJllie
Jackson briefly, it attributed three accomplishments to her leadership: the 5,000-
member Baltimore branch, the Maryland state conference of branches, and the
network of neighborhood associations throughout African American Baltimore.
Parenthetically, the NAACP branch was not the only force in the Black
community of Baltimore that was involved in neighborhood improvement In 1935,
the Afro sponsored the first of its annual Clean Block campaigns. Over a period of
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