NAACP celebrates 100 years with President Obama
Hazel Trice Edney/NNPA Editor-in-Chief
Issue date: 8/2/09 Section: Politics
NEW YORK (NNPA) - Cheers, applause, laughter, repeated standing ovations - and even church-like shouts of "Yes!" and "Amen!" at the recent NAACP centennial meeting showed the world that amidst the daily responsibilities of the Oval Office, President Barack Obama has not lost his rock-star appeal in the Black community.
"What an extraordinary night, capping off an extraordinary week, capping off an extraordinary 100 years at the NAACP," he shouted his first words to the applauding crowd in New York City, the founding place of the civil rights organization.
President Obama presented the Spingarn medal, the highest justice award bestowed upon a civil rights warrior to NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.
"So Chairman Bond, Brother Justice, I am so grateful to all of you for being here. It's just good to be among friends," Obama said.
He continued, "It's a journey that takes us back to a time before most of us were born, long before the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, Brown v. Board of Education; back to an America just a generation past slavery. It was a time when Jim Crow was a way of life; when lynchings were all too common; when race riots were shaking cities across a segregated land.''
The rapid fire speech, ticking off many of the issues that NAACP members and Black America deal with daily, appeared to pour from the president, who for the past seven months has been largely mired in economic and international affairs. He meshed his mantra of "change" with the historic civil rights progress of the NAACP.
"They also knew that here, in America, change would have to come from the people. It would come from people protesting lynchings, rallying against violence, all those women who decided to walk instead of taking the bus, even though they were tired after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry, looking after somebody else's children. … It would come from men and women of every age and faith, and every race and region - taking Greyhounds on Freedom Rides; sitting down at Greensboro lunch counters; registering voters in rural Mississippi, knowing they would be harassed, knowing they would be beaten, knowing that some of them might never return."
"What an extraordinary night, capping off an extraordinary week, capping off an extraordinary 100 years at the NAACP," he shouted his first words to the applauding crowd in New York City, the founding place of the civil rights organization.
President Obama presented the Spingarn medal, the highest justice award bestowed upon a civil rights warrior to NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.
"So Chairman Bond, Brother Justice, I am so grateful to all of you for being here. It's just good to be among friends," Obama said.
He continued, "It's a journey that takes us back to a time before most of us were born, long before the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights Act, Brown v. Board of Education; back to an America just a generation past slavery. It was a time when Jim Crow was a way of life; when lynchings were all too common; when race riots were shaking cities across a segregated land.''
The rapid fire speech, ticking off many of the issues that NAACP members and Black America deal with daily, appeared to pour from the president, who for the past seven months has been largely mired in economic and international affairs. He meshed his mantra of "change" with the historic civil rights progress of the NAACP.
"They also knew that here, in America, change would have to come from the people. It would come from people protesting lynchings, rallying against violence, all those women who decided to walk instead of taking the bus, even though they were tired after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry, looking after somebody else's children. … It would come from men and women of every age and faith, and every race and region - taking Greyhounds on Freedom Rides; sitting down at Greensboro lunch counters; registering voters in rural Mississippi, knowing they would be harassed, knowing they would be beaten, knowing that some of them might never return."
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