NAACP Stresses Renewed Commitment To Fighting For Equality At 92nd Convention

Jet, July 30, 2001

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume asked the organization's members to recommit themselves to fighting for racial equality at the NAACP's 92nd annual convention in New Orleans.

"We found a way to help a nation divided through the confusion and turbulence of the 1960s," Mfume said in his keynote address at the convention. "It is now a matter of having still yet a long way to go."

Speaking to delegates and NAACP supporters at the convention, whose theme was "Speaking Truth To Power," Mfume mentioned a lengthy list of issues on which he wants to see progress.

The list includes making health care affordable to everyone, cleaning up the environment, reforming the electoral system, ending the AIDS epidemic, removing the Confederate flag from public places and stopping hate crimes.

He also told conventioneers that the NAACP is preparing to sue the paint industry in an effort to hold it accountable for health problems linked to lead paint.

If NAACP members think they face a difficult task now, they should remember the obstacles the group has overcome, Mfume said.

"Can you imagine 1909?" he asked referring to the NAACP's founding.

During the convention, noted attorney and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan was presented with the NAACP's 86th Spingarn Medal at the annual Freedom Fund Dinner. Jordan was a special advisor to former President Clinton and served as president of the National Urban League for many years.

Also during the six-day convention, Julian Bond, NAACP chairman of the board of directors, attacked the Bush administration during his speech.

Bond said President Bush has "appeased the wretched appetites of the extreme right wing, and picked Cabinet officials whose devotion to the Confederacy is nearly canine in its uncritical affection."

Bond assailed the civil rights records of Interior Secretary Gale Norton, a former Colorado attorney general, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

The administration's tax cut and its faith-based initiative, which would allow government funds to flow to churches, mosques and synagogues that seek to ease social woes, also were targets of criticism.

Bond said that church-based groups receiving government funds would be able to refuse employment to people outside their religion. Critics, including Bond, contend this could amount to government-funded discrimination. During the convention, the NAACP voted to oppose Bush's Faith-Based Initiative because it allows discrimination on the basis of religion.

Bond also pointed out that Bush's tax cut "placed funding for important programs in a lockbox, raiding the treasury for a decade, closing the door on government aid for children, for schools, for the poor."

Bond stressed, "This is government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich."

Neither Bond nor Mfume has met with Bush since he took office in January. However, Bush addressed the NAACP convention through a videotaped greeting.

"We must continue our work to make sure that my party keeps faith with the memory of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass," Bush said.

Bush also promised to improve the nation's public schools and to work to end racial profiling.

Mfume said, "I welcome the president's words, but I will welcome more his actions."

Bond explained the convention's theme, "Speaking Truth To Power," was chosen "because we have a tradition of resisting unjust authority, of confronting and conquering social evil. It expresses our approach to the cause of justice for nine decades and to the 2000 election and its aftermath; and it characterizes how we intend to conduct ourselves into the future."

Mfume pointed out, "It is important to be able to speak truth and do it unapologetically and unabashedly, recognizing that it is the legacy of this organization to do that in the interest of strengthening the Association and making this nation a better place for all Americans."

The NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its half-million adult and youth members throughout the United States and the world are the premiere advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.