The economic hardships which the Great Depression brought for African Americans caused the NAACP to reconsider its mission, tactics and organization. By 1933 Chairman of the Board Joel Spingarn could admit in a letter to Mary White Ovington:

I have lost interest in the Association as it is now run, I do not approve of the spirit that motivates it, and I do not feel like allowing my name to be used to represent that spirit. ...I am not interested in a succession of cases. When I joined the Association we had what was a thrilling program, revolutionary for its time, and one that gave us a little hope of solving the whole problem. Now we have only cases, no program, and no hope.

As the fortunes and budget of the organization began to flag Spingarn and Du Bois proposed a conference to reinvigorate the organization. As Du Bois explained to James Weldon Johnson:

We want to get together some of the younger independent thinking Negroes of strong, honest character.  We have in mind, not men who have just finished school, but rather those who have been out a few years, and yet are not fixed in their ways…The NAACP will exercise no control over the conference and will leave it perfectly free and untrammeled in discussion and conclusions.

The conference was help August 18-21 at Spingarn's Troutbeck estate near Amenia, N.Y. [Hover over the link "conference" or click on maximize then the picture's metadata to see names of the participants] The conference attendees as described by attendee Winonah Bond of the YWCA:

The twenty two young men and eleven young women ...enjoyed a particularly stimulating and significant experience. The average age of the group was thirty two; there were teachers, a doctor, lawyers, social workers, a librarian, an electrical engineer, writers, journalists, and college professors. There were 14 A.B's eight A.M.'s and three Ph D's.

In a letter to Spingarn immediately after the conference Mary White Ovington wrote:

I wanted to tell you how successful I felt the conference had been and how it had dispelled at least for me, any thought that youth was criticizing us in an unconstructive way. Of course, we are found to be criticized, but except for the leaning towards communism, nothing was proposed that contradicted our program... I do feel that we need to consider our form of organization and try to devise a way to bring more people actively into relation with us. There was a good deal of feeling that we were too much centered in New York ... but no means of bringing the branches more closely in contact with the Board was proposed.

Louis Redding summed up:

Rather insistent were the pronouncements of those who opened discussions at the Conference of the imminence of basic change in the political, economic and social structure of our country. What the change would bring no one would prophesy. Equally insistent was the judgment that the older policies for Negro advancement had failed and were inappropriate to the changed order impending. In view of all of this, it seem to me a logical necessity that there should be a resolute decision to junk the old policies, followed by a clear cut outlining of basically new philosophies or policies. Such new policies I hoped would be adaptable to the Negro masses rather than considerate only of the talented tenth"

As a result of the conference the NAACP formed a committee to conceive of new ways to organize the organization. The ideas of the conference were never transformed into changes perhaps because of attitudes exemplified in this letter from one of the participants Abram  Harris to Joel Spingarn:

I am disappointed, however,, in the attitude you persistently exhibit. It seems that you are expecting some one to work out the ideas of a new program and then tell the administrative leaders of the Association how these ideas can be put into practice day by day. This expectancy was clearly revealed by you at the Amenia conference last August....  I do not propose to work out the ways in which these ideas are to be executed from day to day. I am quite willing to assist in laying the intellectual, or as you would have it, theoretical, basis of a new program. I am quite unwilling, however, to commit myself except in broad details, as to how this program is to be carried out practically. If certain ideas are present and the Association's leaders believe in them, then it is up to these leaders, by virtue of their practical work to carry them out.

Du Bois eventually presented a sweeping plan to democratize the organization and to focus more on economic issues at the group's 1934 annual conference, but nothing came of it. Historian Kenneth Janken believes that White understood that such a change would lead to new leadership and stymied or dragged his feet until he had consolidated power at the organization.* Even though the attempt failed it shows the path not taken.  The organization would remain a top/down one with an emphasis on legal action and lobbying with the national  organization in New York calling the shots.

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