NC NAACP President's Opening Statement for the 59th NAACP Annual Southeast Conference in Raleigh

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 22, 2012

For More Information:     Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137

                                         Atty. Jennifer Marsh, Interim Executive Director, 919-682-4700

For Media Assistance:     Rob Stephens, Office Manager, 336-577-9335

Statement Presented at the Opening of the

NAACP Southeast Region 59th Annual Civil Rights Advocacy Training Institute

Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, NC NAACP President

with State Conference Presidents and Representatives from Seven Southern States

March 22, 2012

Martin Street Baptist Church, Raleigh, NC 

---

We want to welcome everyone to the 59th NAACP Southeast Regional Civil Rights Advocacy Training Institute and welcome the State Conference Presidents from the Mighty Southeast Region V of the NAACP: Ms. Gloria J. Sweet-Love of Tennessee and Chair of the Southeast Region Leadership Caucus; Dr. Lonnie Randolph of South Carolina; Mr. Edward Dubose of Georgia:  Ms. Adora Obi Nweze of Florida; Atty. Derrick Johnson of Mississippi and Mr. Bernard Simelton of Alabama.

We also want to thank Rev. Dr. Earl Johnson and the Martin Street Baptist Church for being a constant friend to the Movement and the NAACP, exemplifying the role a pastor and a church should play in fighting against systematic injustice in our communities.

The NAACP seeks to continue pushing the state, the South, and the Nation forward on the issues of voting rights, civil rights, educational equality, equal protection under the law, economic justice, and health care, while others want to go backwards with a regressive and racialized political agenda.

Just last night, for example, we caught wind of a blog that appeared on a John Locke Foundation website with a racist and homophobic image of President Obama. The post should be an affront not only to the Black community, the civil rights community, or the LBGT community, but every North Carolinian and American.

We are honored to welcome these warriors for human rights from across the South to our capital city. This conference could not come at a more critical time in North Carolina and the South. Last night marked the 47th anniversary of the third march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, when marchers, led by religious and civil rights activists, were finally able to begin the march from Selma to Montgomery. The National Guard was needed to protect the marchers from the hateful violence of hundreds of crazed hecklers.  Most historians credit the courageous sacrifices of the marchers with creating the political atmosphere that secured passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Now, 47 years later, the ultra-conservative Tea Party forces, funded by millions of dollars from rich, right-wing corporations, have set in motion a South-wide campaign against our voting rights, public education, economic justice and equal protection. In North Carolina, we have seen this first hand. In the state legislature, they have attacked the well-being of African-Americans, the poor, children, women, the LGBT community, the elderly, Latinos and other minorities.

We begin today with an emphasis on religion and faith. Today, and in the days to come, we will have training, organizing and workshops for our grassroots leaders to arm them with 21^st Century civil rights advocacy tools, based in the powerful organizing tradition of our ancestors. And on Saturday we will hold a mass Town Hall Outdoor Rally against voter suppression.

The political pundits often speak of the South as the Solid South. They explain how politicians seek to engage in the so-called "Southern strategy." The language of the Southern strategy grows out of the Nixon campaign of the 1960s, which utilized the issue of race attached to a call for states' rights, neighborhood schools, (which was and still is a code-word for segregation) law and order, Biblical conservatism designed to divide and undermine Black and White fusion politics, all the while seeking to get White Southerners to vote against their own best interests.

The NAACP and the Civil Rights Movement has always challenged this notion of the Solid South. We have always stood solid against regression and injustice. Black and White, young and old, our people built movements from Reconstruction to the modern Civil Rights Movement that transformed this Nation. Over and against racial division, we have lifted up the cause of Unity. Over and against ultra-conservative evangelical religion, African-American and White preachers in the South, standing in the evangelical, social justice tradition of Martin Luther King, have declared that the proclamation of the faith must address issues of systemic poverty, racism and injustice, not just private individual sin.

Though there have always been frontal attacks on voting rights, the Civil Rights Movement has always been there to demand and fight for complete adherence to the 14^th Amendment that guarantees equal protection for all citizens.

Though there has always been a criminal justice system based on the criminalization of Black men and racial profiling of people of color, who were punished through race-based lynchings then and a racially-biased Death Penalty system now, Blacks and Whites and Native Americans in the South have always fought to humanize an inhumane system and demand young men of color be treated as equals in the eyes of the law.

Though the South is mostly made up of "Right to Work" states, the Civil Rights Movement has always fought for labor rights.

Though the South has always struggled with educational equality and true integration, the Civil Rights Movement will never give up on the fight for high quality, well-funded, diverse, constitutional public education for every child. And not without many victories along the way.

Finally we should be reminded the South is not Solid, but instead is the home of social movements that have transformed this Nation time and time again. The South has been the place where Blacks, progressive Whites and other minorities have time and time again found a way to harmonize our voices, votes and efforts for the cause of justice over and against the forces of division and racial disparity We are here at this conference to build on that history and the responsibility that it brings to a new generation.

###

Go to www.naacpnc.org for a full schedule of events.

Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.