Moorfield Storey

Moorfield Storey (March 19, 1845 – October 24, 1929) was an American lawyer, anti-imperial activist, and civil rights leader based in Boston, Massachusetts. According to Storey's biographer, William B. Hixson Jr., he had a worldview that embodied "pacifism, anti-imperialism, and racial egalitarianism fully as much as it did laissez-faire and moral tone in government." Storey served as the founding president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving from 1909 to his death in 1929. He opposed United States expansionism beginning with the Spanish–American War.

Moorfield Storey was born in 1845 in Roxbury, Massachusetts, then a suburb of Boston. His family was descended from the earliest Puritan settlers in New England and had close connections with the abolitionist movement. Storey's father was a Boston lawyer. The young Storey went to the Boston Latin School and graduated in 1862, during the beginning of the Civil War. He then continued onto Harvard University, where he was a member of the Glee Club,^{[better source needed]} graduating in 1866, and then studied at Harvard Law School. In a speech almost thirty years later at Cambridge University, Storey discussed the mindset of the young men of his generation, stating that "a great movement for intellectual, religious, and political freedom was just culminating".

Storey established a law practice in Boston, Massachusetts as a founding partner of the firm Storey, Thorndike, Palmer, Dodge (Currently "Locke Lord LLP"). From 1873 to 1879 he was editor of the American Law Review. He was elected president of the American Bar Association in 1896, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as president of the Massachusetts Bar Association during 1913–14.

He was a well-known person in the "Mugwump" movement of 1884, and actively supported Grover Cleveland. As a strong believer in the gold standard, freedom of contract, and property rights, Storey opposed the candidacy of William Jennings Bryan and supported the National Democratic Party (Gold Democrats) third-party ticket in 1896. In 1887 he built a house on Great Cranberry Island.

An opponent of military intervention, Storey spoke at the first anti-imperialist mass meeting in Boston in June 1898, called because of the Spanish–American War. He was a vice president of the New England Anti-Imperialist League. In addition, he wrote a book brief for the Lodge Committee summarizing the war crimes of the Philippine–American War. From 1905 until its dissolution in 1921 Storey was the Anti-Imperialist League's President. He perceived that "national subjugation overseas and racial persecution at home were related," which drove his efforts at reform.

Storey was known to work 16-hour days, even into his later years. He was a fighter for unpopular issues, and as Bliss Perry wrote in his obituary for Storey, he was "usually in the minority at any given time." Storey himself was quoted as saying "It is not success to fight on the winning side. It is success to fight bravely for a principle even if one does not live to see it triumph." This determination to fight for the right, even if he did not win, led him to cross political swords with Presidents William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and United States Secretary of War Elihu Root.

Late in the campaign of 1900, Storey seriously pondered running for president on a third-party ticket but decided against it as impractical. Instead, he ran a losing, but spirited and high-profile campaign for Congress as an independent anti-imperialist candidate. Other planks in his platform included support for the gold standard and free trade.

..."What, indeed, is true civilization ? By its fruit you shall know it. It is not dominion, wealth, material luxury – nay, not even a great literature and education widespread, good though these things be. Civilization is not a veneer; it must penetrate to the very heart and core of societies of men. Its true signs are thought for the poor and suffering, chivalrous regard and respect for women, the frank recognition of human brotherhood, irrespective of race or color or nation or religion; the narrowing of the domain of mere force as a governing factor in the world, the love of ordered freedom, abhorrence of what is mean and cruel and vile, ceaseless devotion to the claims of justice. Civilization in that, its true, its highest sense, must make for Peace."