[3] Before being made secretary, he had investigated fires in Cherokee County, Georgia, that the NAACP thought could be arson against Black people.
[5] Nash took office as secretary-treasurer in February 1916, but hadn't adopted a tangible program for the organization's future by mid-November.
He produced a lengthy report for Peabody proposing an extensive information campaign and other advocacy around the nation towards an anti-lynching law.
Historian Charles Francis Kellogg describes this as having a chilling effect on his relations with prominent NAACP members Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard.
A committee was established shortly after to develop plans for 1917 and the NAACP hired its first field secretary, James Weldon Johnson.
[6] As secretary, Nash was intensely focused on the NAACP's Federal Aid Committee—in 1917 Ovington wrote that he spent half of his time with the committee.
He initially took a leave of absence but by September was forced to resign, in part due to his large involvement with the Federal Aid Committee.