National Communication Association

The National Communication Association was founded in 1914 by a small group of members of the National Council of Teachers of English (organized 1910). Their goal was to establish, based on the examples set by regional associations such as the Eastern Public Speaking Conference, a national, independent organization to serve the needs of the public speaking teacher, an organization that would cultivate the development of a vital, academic speech communication discipline. According to Giles W. Gray, a publications editor for the new organization, it was the recalcitrance of the National Council of Teachers of English and the refusal of some of its most influential members and officers to yield at any point . . . that provided the impetus for separation. The new organization's first president, James M. O'Neill, recalled in a 1964 message explaining the rationale for the founding of the NCA that, ... the only academically respectable work in public speaking [at that time] was being done by teachers who were 'on their own,' wholly independent of the English department or any other department.

This first vision of the NCA was called the National Association of the Academic Teachers of Public Speaking and had seventeen charter members. The organization functioned under this name, promoting research and more effective teaching, until its 1945 convention, when the group changed its name to the Speech Association of Americirca In 1969, the name was changed to the Speech Communication Association. Membership grew from 106 in 1915 to 7200 in 1970, but declined to just over 6000 by 1989. Initial gross income was $1300 and reached $950,000 in 1989.

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