A firsthand account describes the origins of a national civil-rights organization formed in reaction to a Northern race riot and pervasive discrimination. After a magazine article warned of escalating race violence, the author and two colleagues met in New York with other reformers to plan a public campaign. They issued a Lincoln’s birthday call for a national conference and enlisted prominent supporters to publicize it. That call condemned Southern disfranchisement, segregation in public life, and violent attacks on black citizens, and urged a broad coalition of citizens to defend equality before the law. The narrative follows those founding meetings and the association’s first months of organization and advocacy.