authorized to represent any government employee west of the Mississippi River. He worked to get blacks hired in the City of Long Beach's Trash, Police, and Fire Departments. In 1940, McBride and his wife Lillian decided to try and form a Long Beach branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). They recruited Roscoe Hayes, L.J. Jones, and Nathan Holly and held the organizational meetings at the McBrides home, under the watchful eye of the police. With the assistance of the Reverend Willy Lomax of the Second Baptist Church, who made an appeal to his congregation, they were able to raise sufficient funds and membership to be accepted as an official chapter of the NAACP. Among the many injustices he fought were attempts to bar him and his wife, also active in the movement, from purchasing a home on Lemon Avenue in Long Beach in 1948. When restrictive covenants and a petition by white neighbors to keep his family out might have stopped another man, McBride persevered, and not only bought the bungalow but raised his six children there. The house became a regular meeting place for civil rights activists. In the 1950s, McBride and his wife hosted receptions at their home for Eslande Goode Robeson, wife of Paul Robeson, while Mr. Robeson performed at a fundraising event for the Long Beach NAACP, and Margarita Belafonte, wife of Harry Belafonte—African-American luminaries and activists at the time. The McBride home was designated a historical landmark by the Long Beach City Council in 1994. By then, McBride had become a local legend. Having co-founded the Long Beach Chapter of the NAACP, he successfully fought to integrate the Long Beach Police Department, the Long Beach Fire Dept., Ralph's grocery stores, the naval shipyard and General Telephone Co. He organized a student revolt (including two of his own children) to force local officials to abandon blackface minstrel shows. From 1948 to 1972, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintained surveillance of McBride. The FBI was concerned that civil rights leaders had communist sympathies or ties, and conducted surveillance and covert activities against civil rights leaders and organizations as part of its COINTELPRO program. Death and legacy Ernest McBride Sr. died in 2007 at the age of 97. In addition to the historical landmark designation of his home, Long Beach's Ernest S. McBride Sr. High School, Ernest McBride Skate Park,