The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP was established in New York in 1909 by writer / activist W.E.B. DuBois. The first NAACP branches in South Carolina were organized in Charleston and Columbia in 1917 with 75 members. Two of the founding members in Charleston were artist Edwin Harleston and activist Septima Poinsette Clark. Their greatest early success occurred in 1920, when they used a petition signed by three-fourths of the blacks in the city to persuade white leaders to hire black teachers to teach in black public schools