NAACP Convention Cincinnati 2016 Leaders Speak & Register Today On-site
"Amidst our national convention, we are prayerfully concerned about the preliminary reports of several officers shot and killed in Baton Rouge. At a moment in which the NAACP convenes under the theme, "Our Lives Matter, Our Votes Count," we are reminded of our fellow citizens and NAACP members back home in Baton Rouge grappling with both grief in the wake of Alton Sterling's funeral and moral revulsion at this latest violence. The NAACP remains unapologetically committed to both nonviolence as a means of protest and as a way of life."
Thank you Nicholas for that warm and gracious introduction. We have worked together for quite some time and I’m thankful for your years of friendship. I’d first like to thank my mother, Eladies Sampson, who has supported my every dream and aspiration and my second mom, Hazel Nell Dukes who I can always count on. Thank you to all of my family who are here tonight….You are the wind beneath my wings. Let me acknowledge my colleagues on the NAACP National Board of Directors…thank you for your continued support and tireless efforts as we work to lead this 107 year old organization. To our Foundation Trustees…thank you for the advocacy you provide within your companies to secure much needed resources for our beloved organization. We celebrate our President & CEO Cornell William Brooks who has traveled the length and breath of this nation advocating for freedom and justice. We look forward to your address tomorrow morning. And to the hardest working staff in this country, thank you for your dedication and sacrifice. We have gathered here in the Queen City of Cincinnati, a place where we have come to host our annual conventions not just once but three times….in 1946-“One Society”, 2008 “Power, Justice, Freedom, Vote!” and now in 2016. OUR LIVES MATTER. OUR VOTES COUNT. Don’t let our convention theme wash over. It is not just a catchy slogan. It is our mission—our way out of the chaos closing in on us. Take it into your hearts and make it your mantra now and in the months and years to come—not just through this particularly frightening election cycle and periods of racial outrage, but for the rest of our lives. Our lives are on the line today as they were in 1909 when the unflinching and defiant founders of our Association—Mary White Ovington, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and William English Walling—came together to fight lynching which was nothing but the threat and execution of daily terrorism against black people. We thank God for these brave people of conscience, faith and, yes, physical courage in the shadow of our brothers and sisters being hung from trees. Our lives are on the line again today as they have been at no time since we won the legal right to vote in the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and ‘60s. We had leaders like Thurgood Marshall at our legal defense fund and leaders on the front lines in Mississippi like Medgar and Myrlie Evers. Medgar was martyred along with the “Freedom Summer” young men: Andrew Goodman, Mickey Schwerner and James Chaney. All just for the right to vote! And when we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the progress we made in the halls of power was met with backlash. Racial strife actually intensified and resulted in the urban riots of the late 1960s and early 1970s and thousands of nameless martyrs died. Many of our inner city communities were abandoned to the drug trade. Power was still conceding nothing. But we made progress. We accessed our right to higher education. We demanded all workplaces and neighborhoods be integrated. We used our right to vote to take our seat at the table on city councils and state legislatures and Congress and, yes, in the White House. And for all of our hard-won achievements, we are tasting a backlash again. Many people who have held power and privilege for no other reason that the color of their skin are feeling displaced by our progress. In this election year, we are seeing open racism being cheered once more. They say they are tired of “political correctness.” We say that we are tired of being resented and persecuted just for sharing in the promise of America with an equal place in civil society. We are tired of the almost daily slights we endure for driving while black with more and more alarming evidence that our lives are on the line every time we get behind the wheel—not from accidents, but from racial profiling by police. And our well-being is on the line every day we venture out into a society that is far from healed of its original sin of racism. We are up against “The Exhausting Task for Being Black in America.” That’s the title of a powerful piece of prose by USA Today reporter Arienne Thompson. Hear her lament: “Do you know how exhausting it is to be black in America? Do you have any idea? Do you know what it's like to be … ... followed in a store …‘mistaken’ for the help. ... petted like a dog because your hair is ‘interesting.’ … told to ‘get over’ the wholesale trade and trafficking of your ancestorsI do. And so do millions of other black Americans. Rich and poor. Uneducated and those with a Ph.D. Famous and anonymous. We are exhausted. We are tired. We can't breathe. We can no longer bear the weight of seeing our men, our husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins humiliated, profiled, emasculated, choked, dragged and shot, day in and day out. We are sick of needing new hashtags. #MichaelBrown. #TamirRice. #EricGarner. #TrayvonMartin. #WhosNext. We are sick of hollow apologies and press conferences and presidential speeches and gone-too-soon funerals and distraught parents wailing in the streets.” It’s exhausting being black in America. ---- The violence to which black people are being subjected is devastating. We have witnessed in recent years and recent days horrendous testimony and documented evidence of unarmed people of color being hunted and injured and murdered by law enforcement personnel with little or no accountability for these violations of civil rights and desecrations of human rights. There must be accountability. And there must be radical change in the way we do policing. I am not minimizing the difficult task of our men and women in blue who are often being asked to keep order in communities burdened with poverty in a society that continues to starve them of opportunity and fair access to employment and quality health care and education. My brother is a 22-year veteran of the Newark police force. We cannot ask him to solve all the social problems in Newark. We must increase our demands that ALL of our communities be treated justly and all of our people be given the opportunity to thrive. But we also demand police forces that reflect our communities and police who live amongst us and work with us to make our neighborhoods safer. We also demand an end to the outrageously disproportionate arrests of Black people for “crimes” like marijuana possession and having a broken taillight for which white people are almost never prosecuted. It is exhausting dealing on a daily basis with such blatant, petty injustices. It is exhausting, but we must not let ourselves be exhausted. THINK about the more than 5 million enslaved Africans who survived the transatlantic voyage—the Middle Passage—to the Western Hemisphere in chains. And consider their descendants, our foreparents, whose labor was stolen to lay the foundation for the United States of America to be the political, industrial, technological, and financial giant it is today. ---- Despite our exhaustion, we still have have work to do. And we will do the work. Because our … lives … matter. Yes, our lives must be made to matter to society. That is our challenge and it is the duty of white America to make that a reality as well—through efforts of their own and through working in common cause with us. Racism surely harms people of color, but it poisons those who perpetrate it as well. But our lives must also matter to ourselves and to each other. And together we will lift each other up and make our tasks lighter, more joyful, and more life-giving. THAT is how we will make American great again—not by pitting one group of people against another, but by embracing our common humanity. I do not have to tell you what a dangerous and defining time this is in America. It is an equally crucial and perilous season in the world. The work of the NAACP is essential because life is so precarious for so many of our people. The violence born of discrimination, hatred, bigotry, racism, poverty, addiction, hunger, homelessness and illiteracy are signs of a society filled with fear, hatred, and mistrust. Yes, we mourn with the people of France and Belgium and all the innocents lost to terrorism. We equally mourn with those killed by terrorism in Baghdad and Syria and Istanbul in a region torn apart by centuries of colonialism. There is never any excuse for terrorism, never any excuse for violence. But if we are to break the cycle of violence, we must model a bold commitment to peace and justice around the world. Let us be the change that we seek. Violence is real in America— From San Bernardino, California to Orlando Florida . From Coast to Coast Fear of violence is paralyzing and polarizing our nation. The casual manner in which violence and indignity are portrayed in the media and in the culture often leaves us numb, indifferent and feeling powerless.. This is a delicate and difficult time. We are living in days of overt aggression against people of color. The days of subtle racism seem to be passé. It is unbelievable what some people think they can get away with because of their racial prejudice and race privilege. Any Action Committed While Black Is Punishable By Death Walking Up the Stairwell At Your Apartment Selling CD’s Outside A Store Attending Bible Study Selling Cigarettes (Lousy) Outside A Store Making Eye Contact With The Police Walking Home With a Friend Holding A Fake Gun In A Parking Lot Attending A Birthday Party With Friends Holding A Fake Gun In Walmart Walking Towards The Police Walking Away From The Police Riding On Public Transportation •Driving With A Busted Brake Light Going To The Bathroom In Your Apartment Laughing Out Loud Asking A Stranger For Help Missing A Front License Plate Failure To Turn On Car Blinker Sitting In Your Care Before A Party Holding A Fake Gun In Washington, D.C. Riding With Your Fiancée and Daughter Holding A Fake Gun In A Park Wearing A Hoodie Together we must meet the challenge! ---- Imagine this if you will: not just us standing up for fair treatment from the criminal justice system, but us standing WITH everyone IN the criminal justice system to say together that we are going to make it fairer and to end its racism. Imagine us not just demanding that police treat us equally, but us sitting down in small groups with police until every vestige of racism is eliminated from policing and we all work in the common cause of keeping our neighborhoods safe. How else will our police ever develop cultural competency? They must not only look like us, they have to think like us because we are all in this together. As we mourn and express outrage over the killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, our hearts go out to the families of Dallas police officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa. All the violence must stop. Proverbs tells us, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” We must imagine it if we are ever to do it! We are struggling against systemic assaults on rights that have been hard won throughout the years by sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons across ethnicities, classes, and faith traditions. At times we might be weary. But in the words of that old Negro spiritual, “we have to stand here and fight anyhow!” ---- The legendary Mississippi freedom fighter Fannie Lou Hamer never stopped fighting. Despite being duly elected delegates to the 1964 Democratic National Convention, the white majority was determined not to seat the Freedom Delegation from Mississippi. When she spoke before the Credentials Committee, she described the humiliating discrimination endured by black Mississippians, explaining how she was beaten in a Mississippi jailhouse leaving her with kidney damage, eye injury, and a constant limp—all just for trying to exercise the right to vote that too many of us take for granted. Ms. Hamer told the Committee, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired!” She did not win that battle, but she and others won the war when the Voting Rights Act was enacted the following year—an Act that our current US Supreme Court gutted and that the Congress has yet to restore. Last month, we celebrated the extraordinary life of Muhammad Ali, whose funeral was held in his hometown of Louisville, KY, a short drive south of where we gather this week. His religious convictions led him to be a conscientious objector to the draft. In 1966, just two years after winning the heavyweight boxing title, Ali was arrested, prosecuted and found guilty of evading the draft. He could have surrendered and become a statistic. But not Ali. He appealed, and the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction. While losing four of his prime years of boxing, he returned to the sport, became the unprecedented champion boxer, and leveraged his athletic success to be a global ambassador for peace, goodwill, and philanthropy. Let us recall the radical truth he spoke at the time of his arrest: “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? “If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. Earlier this month, we mourned the death of Elie Wiesel, one of the foremost defenders of human rights the world has ever known. Wiesel was a prisoner in concentration camps in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and wrestled with the humiliation and the hatred of Jews shown in Hitler’s death camps. Despite what he endured, he did not escape the death camps only to lead a quiet, peaceful life. He devoted his entire long life to fighting for human rights for all—from his adopted country of America to South Africa and the Sudan. In 1989, Elie Wiesel told the Human Rights Campaign, “Those who are bigots do not stop at classes or races or at gays and lesbians. Those who hate you hate me. Those who hate Jews hate Blacks. And those who hate Blacks will hate simply because they talk differently or because they believe in something they refuse to believe in. Hate is contagious. They are committing sins—sins against society, sins against humanity and against creation as such. Civil rights must apply to every single segment of our population.” Fannie Lou Hamer, Muhammad Ali, Elie Wiesel, and countless other freedom fighters— some famous leaders and others anonymous foot soldiers—knew exhaustion but kept on fighting because they knew that for their generation and for those of us who would come behind them: our … lives … matter. ---- The deep wisdom of people of color is that victory comes in the paradox of working and waiting. Contemporary life seduces us into expecting good things to happen immediately and effortlessly. You can start an engine by pushing a button. You can adjust the climate in your home with a computer program on your way home from work. Almost all of our needs can be met through an app on a smartphone in our on-demand society. Things that used to take hours in the past can happen in seconds today because “there’s an app for this and there’s an app for that.” But the convenient on-demand society cannot handle the weighty matters of life and death that confront us today. This work – this justice work – requires more than a simple app. We can use and must use social media, but we cannot abandon putting our lives on the line again by getting out in the streets. We cannot afford just to reinforce each other by living in a bubble in our circle of Facebook friends. This work requires us physically being with each other in face-to-face meetings. This work requires us to organize in coalitions with diverse groups who are also committed to social justice. And, yes, this work will require us to sit down with people who we may regard as our enemies now, but who we must find common cause with if we are to survive as a nation and as a human race. ---- This year is the 80th anniversary of the NAACP Youth and College Division. The involvement and leadership of our young people is not new. In 1935 Juanita Jackson, a youth delegate, made a fiery address to the NAACP convention. Her address demanded that the NAACP create a Youth Department. Her relentless advocacy led the Board Of Directors to authorize the creation of the NAACP Youth and College Division. From it’s humble beginnings we now celebrate 600 Youth and College Units with more than 70,000 members Youth energized the Civil Rights movement through the NAACP and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Veterans of that fight, like Congressman John Lewis, have never given up, and Congressman Lewis recently led an old-fashioned sit-in right on the floor of the United States House of Representatives to demand a simple vote on a desperately needed gun control measure. The youth in our movement today give me hope. They are more comfortable with racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity than any generation before them.. They do not just tolerate people who are different from them, they celebrate them. The barriers are coming down, and I am hopeful that the turmoil we are witnessing this year is the last gasp of an old guard whose time has come and gone. ---- The NAACP’s comprehensive game changers are focused on ensuring economic vitality, access to quality education, equity in the criminal justice system, access to quality health care, youth leadership development and active civic engagement for all Americans, I want to call your attention tonight to a critical element of our civic engagement work. Voting! Do you realize that, in this national election cycle, more than 13 million Americans voted to support poisonous hate speech and violent behavior? Many of our sisters and brothers both black and white are frustrated about their economic security. They, like we, are not benefiting from the economic prosperity of the country, where the elite continue to flourish at the expense of the ordinary, hardworking masses of people. We remind them tonight, that we are not the enemy. We, too, know frustration and fear. We have to collaborate because the future of our children depends on our pulling together rather than pulling apart. Unlike the Occupy Movement several years ago, our movement and the Black Lives Matter movement must be strategic and show staying power—as the NAACP has for more than 107 years of activism. While everyone in this room is already committed to voting in this critical year and in every primary and general election no matter who or what is on the ballot, we have got see to it that voting is once again embraced as the sacred right that it is—not just because our forebears fought and died for it but because if we want Black Lives to matter, Black votes have to show up and be counted. Yes, the backlash against our voting rights is in full swing in states across the country, reactionary legislatures once again throwing up every obstacle imaginable to us getting to the polls. We MUST show them that they cannot stop us. We MUST turn out in larger numbers from coast to coast. Voting is the only power we have against the big money that dominates elections. Voting is the only language that politicians understand. Say it with me: “I matter because I vote!” ----- We must also stand up against health disparities. The Affordable Care Act was a good first step but it has not ended disparities and has become unaffordable for many. While some are committed to repealing it entirely, we have to be part of a movement to make it stronger and better, until all Americans enjoy truly affordable health insurance and access to quality care. For the past five years, the NAACP has partnered with Gilead Sciences to develop The Black Church and HIV: The Social Justice Imperative. Today we celebrate the annual “Day of Unity,” bringing faith leaders together nationwide to talk about HIV’s disparate impact on Black America to change the course of the epidemic. For us, healthcare is truly a civil rights issue. ---- Finally, NAACP I’m reminded of a story of an old man on an ocean liner sailing for South America in the 1950s. This was before the days of GPS and computer aided guidance. The ship steered into a narrow harbor in the afternoon with plans to return to the sea at midnight. The passengers who saw the ship navigate the narrow rocky passage into the harbor were nervous about how the ship would make its way out. A number of passengers gathered on the deck prior to midnight anxious about the voyage. They stopped one of the sailors to ask how the captain planned to sail safely through the narrow rocky passage in the darkness of the night. The sailor pointed to a bright light on the shore line and explained that the captain would steer the ship safely into the sea through the rocky harbor by aligning himself with the light from the shore. The captain would not steer the ship looking forward. But rather, he would steer by watching the light behind him on the shore. How many of you know that Faith leads from behind. You see, when life is uncertain, when the path is unclear, when the options are unsure, and when fear abounds we -- like the Captain of that ship have learned to steer safely through the dangerous passages of racial injustice, white supremacy, and anti-black hatred with the wisdom and courage of the elders as their eyes were watching God. We have to learn that faith leads from behind. God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might Let us into the light Keep us forever in the path, we pray. ---- We may be exhausted, but we are not empty. We’ve got deep reserves. We’ve got power that was deep in Big Mama’s bosom. We’ve got power that was down in granddaddy’s bones. Years of racism couldn’t kill it. Generations of oppression couldn’t choke it. Decades of segregation couldn’t slay it. They might have pushed it down, but they couldn’t snuff it out. We’ve got some power because our lives matter. “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” We’ve got power! That power has endured generations of state-sponsored terrorism where law enforcement was used to humiliate and intimidate people of color. That power has persevered historic and contemporary Jim Crow systems that assault, arrest, tase, and murder black folks while perpetrators get extended vacations and administrative leaves. There is something on the inside that is resilient in the lives of people of color who somehow, despite the odds, manage to take one more step, fight one more battle, and cast one more vote to affect the outcome. We may get knocked down, but we won’t be knocked OUT! Our power is deep in the hearts of our people and it is deep in the spirit of our communities not because of our complexion; our class; our cars, our college, but because of our Creator. I know that some people are not comfortable with my declaration of faith. But when life is on the line and your survival is in the balance, you need more than a philosophical ground, you need more that a political platform, and you need more than an economic strategy. You need power that is beyond human imagination, human contemplation and human manipulation. If you don’t believe in my God, you ought to believe in a Higher Power because we cannot do this work alone. NAACP, we’ve got power because we’re on the side of justice. And when you are on the side of justice, you are on the side of the Living God. Yes, we need philosophical, political, and economic strategies, but without spiritual power, all of our work is in vain because we are in the fight of our lives. “For our struggle is not against enemies of flesh and blood.” Friends, we have the power to fight because our faith is in God. We’ve been here before. We’ve been threatened before. We’ve been lynched before. We’ve been murdered before. And we fought off oppression before! We can beat this vicious and venomous racism that has reared its ugly head anew. We’ve done it before, and we’ll do it again. Because Greater is HE that is within us than he that is in the world. Yes, Our … Lives … Matter and Our Votes Must Count! Friends, our hearts are heavy tonight. We continue to witness violence, heartbreak and sorrow across our land. We are grieved by reports of police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana who have been killed and wounded today. We are all being traumatized by continuing experiences, reports, and images of violence. We must care tenderly for the wounds of our people, both visible and invisible. Tonight, the NAACP will offer a symbol and a sign of healing to the world. We are inviting African-American males and law enforcement officers to come to the front of the stage to express our commitment to work together to heal our land. We invite Chief Eliot Isaac and Police Specialist Scotty Johnson of the Cincinnati Police Department to lead their officers to the front of the stage. We also invite any and all black men and boys who are here tonight to join us at the stage. We also invite all of us assembled tonight to stand in your places. We all have been injured together, and we all stand in solidarity. We may be exhausted, but we are not empty. We have work to do – black and blue together. Pastor Louis Felton, Servant Leader of the Mt. Airy COGIC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania will come to offer a prayer of unity and community healing. People are coming. We still have hope. We’ve been here before. We are kept by grace. Let Us Pray……
