The NAACP Develops Financial Muscle New white income sources drive program expansion—from Ford Foundation to Rockefeller, from General Motors to AT&T, the nation’s neavy financial hitters extend their support to the NAACP

By 1965, it was becoming clear to the insiders in the movement thatthe civil rights issues were less and less simply black and white. As political gains began to increase and federal laws broadened to cover most exigencies, supported by favorable Supreme Court decisions, the leaders of the movement, including those of the NAACP, came to realize that the economic and social problems of African Americans were less readily addressed by either court decisions or federal legislation, or by protest and confrontation. The new complexities-including the expanded legal definition of who constituted a member of a minority group-required more initial knowledge and data, greater research, and more nuanced strategies. Even during the early 1960s, Wilkins often lamented that the size of his current staff was inadequate to confront these new challenges.