Founded in 1909, the NAACP celebrated its centennial in 2009. Its records are the cornerstone of the Library’s unparalleled resources for the study of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. They are the largest single collection ever acquired by the Library and the most heavily used. The records were given to the Library in 1964 and are periodically augmented. They cover issues and history from the period 1842-2003. Included are manuscripts, prints, photographs, pamphlets, broadsides, audio tapes, phonograph records, films and video recordings.

The pictorial portion of the collection includes 4,500 photos, prints, drawings and posters on microfilm. The pictures depict victims of police and mob violence, segregation in schools, and civil-rights marches. Others document African American men and women in the armed services during World War II, reflecting the NAACP's campaign to integrate the military.

A selection of these can be found in a new online exhibition, “NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom.” The site features nearly 70 treasures from the NAACP’s storied history, including the "Call," Oswald Garrison Villard’s manifesto that launched the NAACP; the organization’s constitution and bylaws; photos of such key events as the New York Silent Protest of 1917, the Marian Anderson concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 and Rosa Parks’ 1955 arrest; documents about investigations of lynchings; President Harry Truman’s executive orders barring discrimination in the federal government and military; the Supreme Court decisions on discrimination; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and background on seminal figures in the NAACP. The online exhibition will expand to eventually feature some 150 items.

In addition to the NAACP records, the Library also houses a vast array of materials useful in the study of African Americans’ struggle for equal rights: the original records of organizations including the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the National Urban League, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the microfilmed records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

The Library also holds the personal papers of major figures in black American history, including those of Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Arthur Spingarn, Moorfield Storey, James Forman, Patricia Roberts Harris, Edward W. Brooke, Thurgood Marshall, Robert L. Carter and Joseph Rauh.