boat people, term used to describe the Indochinese refugees who fled Communist rule after the Vietnam War (1975) in small boats and the many ethnic Chinese who left Vietnam similarly after China's invasion of Vietnam in 1979. More than one million people became refugees. Many perished, and others, upon reaching other Southeast Asian countries, discovered they could not remain permanently. The United States, Canada, and other nations accepted most of the refugees in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Although people continued to flee Vietnam into the mid-1990s, nearly all later boat people have been regarded as economic, not political, refugees. In 1996 the United Nations decided to end the financing of the camps holding the remaining 40,000 boat people, and Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines returned most of the remaining refugees to Vietnam. The term boat people has also been used to describe political and economic refugees from other areas, such as Haiti, who fled their homelands by similar means.

Representation of the People Acts, statutes enacted by the British Parliament to continue the extension of the franchise begun by the Reform Bills (see under Reform Acts). As a result of the government's dependence on the unified efforts of the whole people in World War I the Representation of the People Act of 1918 qualified as voters (with a few exceptions) women over 30 years of age and all men of 21 years or over who could establish short residence. The basis of representation in the House of Commons was fixed at 1 to 70,000. The Representation of the People Act of 1928 qualified all women on the same terms as men. The Representation of the People Act of 1949 reenacted and codified previous legislation relating to the conduct of elections and illegal electoral practices; it abolished the university constituencies and the additional vote given to the occupiers of business premises, thus eliminating plural voting. The Representation of the People Act of 1969 lowered the voting age to 18.

Peculiar People, an alternate rendering for the biblical phrase "chosen people" (of Israel), applied to numerous Protestant dissenting sects such as the Plumstead peculiars. This group, founded in London in 1838 by John Banyard, refused medical treatment as an article of faith.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), organization composed mainly of American blacks, but with many white members, whose goal is the end of racial discrimination and segregation.

The association was formed as the direct result of the lynching (1908) of two blacks in Springfield, Ill. The incident produced a wide response by white Northerners to a call by Mary W. Ovington, a white woman, for a conference to discuss ways of achieving political and social equality for blacks. This conference led to the formation (1910) of the NAACP, headed by eight prominent Americans, seven white and one, William E. B. Du Bois, black. The selection of Du Bois was significant, for he was a black who had rejected the policy of gradualism advocated by Booker T. Washington and demanded immediate equality for blacks. From 1910 to 1934 Du Bois was the editor of the association's periodical The Crisis, which reported on race relations around the world. The new organization grew so rapidly that by 1915 it was able to organize a partially successful boycott of the motion picture The Birth of a Nation, which portrayed blacks of the Reconstruction era in a distorted light.

Most of the NAACP's early efforts were directed against lynching. In this area it could claim considerable success. In 1911 there were 71 lynchings in the United States, with a black person the victim 63 times; by the 1950s lynching had virtually disappeared. Since its beginning, and with increasing emphasis since World War II, the NAACP has advocated nonviolent protests against discrimination and has disapproved of extremist black groups such as SNCC and the Black Panthers in the 1960s and 70s and CORE and the Nation of Islam in the 1980s and 90s, many of which criticized the organization as passive. While complacent in the 1980s, it became more active in legislative redistricting, voter registration, and lobbying in the 1990s.

Well-known leaders of the NAACP include Moorfield Storey (1910-29), Walter White (1931-55), Roy Wilkins (1955-77), and Benjamin Hooks (1977-93). In the mid-1990s the group faced financial difficulties and a loss of confidence in its leadership, as the organization's executive director, Benjamin Chavis (see Muhammad, B. F.), and board chairman, William Gibson, were dismissed in 1994 and 1995, respectively. Merlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, replaced Gibson in 1995, and Representative Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, was chosen to replace Chavis in 1996, with the new title of president and chief executive officer. Mfume retired as president in 2004 and was succeeded by Bruce S. Gordon, a former telecommunications executive, who served from 2005 to 2007. Julian Bond has been board chairman since 1998.

With a 2005 membership of about 500,000 in 2,200 adult branches and 1,700 youth and college chapters, the association remains the largest and most influential civil-rights organization in the United States. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, an independent legal aid group, argues in court on behalf of the NAACP and other civil-rights groups. Along with the NAACP, it was instrumental in helping to bring about the Supreme Court's ruling (1954) against segregated public education in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. case.

Refugees fleeing by boat. The term originally referred to the thousands of Vietnamese who fled their country by sea following the collapse of the South Vietnamese government in 1975. Crowded into small vessels, they were prey to pirates, and many suffered dehydration, starvation, and death by drowning. The term was later applied to waves of refugees who attempted to reach the U.S. by boat from Cuba and Haiti and also to Afghan and other refugees seeking asylum in Australia.

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in full National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Oldest and largest U.S. civil rights organization. It was founded in 1909 to secure political, educational, social, and economic equality for African Americans; W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells were among its 60 founders. Headquartered in Baltimore, Md., the NAACP has undertaken litigation, political activity, and public education programs. In 1939 it organized the independent Legal Defense and Education Fund as its legal arm, which sued for school desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). During World War II it pressed for desegregation of the armed forces, which was achieved in 1948. In 1967 its general counsel, Thurgood Marshall, became the U.S. Supreme Court's first African American justice.

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