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“It can’t just be the righteous few.”

Cornell Brooks ’90JD, the NAACP’s new leader, wants to build a movement.

By Teresa Wiltz | Nov/Dec 2015

Teresa Wiltz has written for the Washington Post, the Root, and the Guardian, among others.

A multiracial band of the young and the not-so-young, several dozen in all, is marching through the streets of Atlanta, winding its way from the Sweet Auburn Historic District to downtown to the strip-mall burbs. The rabbi carries the Torah over her shoulder. The Reverend Cornell William Brooks ’90JD, ordained minister, civil rights attorney, one-time Congressional candidate, and now the NAACP’s newest president and CEO, carries the American flag over his.

At day 13 out of the 40 planned, and 210 miles from the starting point of Selma, Alabama, the pace is slow—three to four miles per hour—but steady. And it’s hot, Deep-South-in-the-middle-of-August hot. Sunscreen and hiking boots are essential. Blisters are to be expected. There’s an audience: folks are lined up along the sidewalk, some giving the thumbs-up; a couple even fall in line with the protesters. Others just gawk. Today, at least, no one hurls the n-word.

“What are you marching for?” someone yells.

“We’re marching for justice and a living wage and voting rights,” Brooks shouts back. “Hashtag JusticeSummer! Like us on Facebook!”

This is, Brooks will tell you, a “neo–Old School” march, a mashup of twentieth-century boots-on-the-ground protest and twenty-first-century social media strategizing. He’s gathered his flock—anyone and everyone is welcome—for a 40-day, thousand-mile trek from Selma to Washington, DC.

Forty days because that’s how long Jesus hung out in the desert. Forty days denotes seriousness of purpose. Selma, because 50 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of others took their lives into their hands to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And Washington, DC, because that’s where the legislators are, the deciders and the policy makers—and those are the folks whom Brooks and his crew will lobby once they march into the capital.

Their demands: criminal justice reform, unfettered access to the ballot box, a living wage for all, and an equitable public education system. This is no nostalgia march. “We have the opportunity to make a sustained case for reform,” says Brooks, slight of stature in dark denim, green plaid shirt, and hiking boots. “I really believe we are on the precipice of what could be a third Reconstruction.”

A little more than a year ago, Brooks took over at the nation’s most famous civil rights organization as its 18th president, a relative unknown following in the footsteps of the far more famous, from W. E. B. Du Bois to Ida B. Wells to Julian Bond to Brooks’s immediate predecessor, the charismatic, often controversial Ben Jealous. Brooks’s appointment came as a surprise to many; he’d been toiling quietly at the nonprofit New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, where he worked to reduce juvenile detention rates and founded the state’s first community court.

Getting tapped for the top slot at the NAACP came at a particularly potent time in allegedly post-racial America. The Black Lives Matter movement has rekindled conversations around racial justice and the efficacy of protest in the twenty-first century. It’s a conversation riven along generational lines: the Black Lives Matter movement is the province of the young and the social media–savvy, some of whom have made it clear they’ve got no time for old-guard activists like Al Sharpton.

At 54, the same age as Barack Obama, Brooks is sandwiched firmly in the middle: too young to have protested in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, but older by a couple of decades than today’s activists. As he sees it, being a post–Civil Rights integration baby puts him in a unique position to bring consensus. “We’re the youngest Boomers—and the oldest Hip-Hoppers,” he says of his contemporaries.

Observes Michael Fauntroy, a Howard University political scientist who studies black political movements, “Generationally and temperamentally, he seems to be someone who brings a level of credibility to the NAACP. For years, the NAACP and most traditional civil rights organizations have been seen as old-school, perhaps out-of-step organizations. Given that he’s relatively young, in his leadership role he can perhaps bridge that divide.”

Almost immediately after his appointment, Brooks leapt into the fray. In November of last year, after a grand jury failed to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the streets of the St. Louis suburb erupted. Shortly after, Brooks led a march through Missouri, to protest the shooting and to demand criminal justice reform. Most of the march was uneventful. Some onlookers even brought cookies and water—and shoes, to replace any that wore out along the way. 

Then the marchers walked through Rosebud, Missouri, a small town of about 400. There they were ambushed by angry counterprotesters wielding Confederate flags and fried-chicken boxes. The crowd blocked the path, booing and yelling, slinging racial slurs and threatening to kill the marchers. “They were exercising very creative expressions of their First Amendment rights,” says Brooks drily.

Brooks is a doctor’s kid, born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in Georgetown, South Carolina. His mother enrolled him in Head Start as a preschooler, determined that her baby was going to have absolutely every advantage, lesson, and class at his disposal. He was weaned on the Bible and nurtured in the pews of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first national African American church to be founded on activism. You could say, too, that activism is in his blood. His grandfather was president of the local chapter of the NAACP at a time when Jim Crow had the South in a stranglehold. Things were so tense that the members met in secret at the local black funeral parlor, arriving separately for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention.

In 1946, Brooks’s grandfather ran for Congress; he lost, but the purpose was to drum up black voter registration in South Carolina. Fifty-two years later, Brooks also ran for Congress, in Virginia, and lost. “When you have that kind of backdrop as a young person, you don’t realize how influential your forebears were,” Brooks says. “You think your career choices were based upon your own meditation, when in fact, your ancestors’ voices really speak to your choices without you even being aware.” 

In many ways, he’s a child of privilege, the scion of four generations of AME ministers. His mom went to boarding school as a kid. But his dad, whom he describes as a “scrappy kind of guy,” knocked around for a bit, serving in the military and working as a janitor before enrolling in medical school. From his dad, he learned to hustle, “to fight to the death. If you’re sleeping, you’re lazy.” From his mother, he learned to not take things so seriously, to have a “slightly less uptight approach.”

“Privilege in the black community is really a mercurial thing,” he says, taking a break from the heat in one of the rest buses that trail behind the marchers. “You can be in Jack and Jill”—an elite social group for upscale black kids—“and have a cousin in the projects. My people were real clear: ‘You’re supposed to do something with your education and skills.’ It’s not about noblesse oblige.”

As an undergrad at Jackson State University, a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi, Brooks majored in political science. There, he met his wife, Janice Broome Brooks, with whom he has two sons. And there, he heard a lecture that changed his life direction. The speaker asked the audience a series of questions:

“How many of you believe that America’s generally a great country?” Everyone raised their hands.

“How many of you have read the US Constitution in its entirety?” No one raised a hand.

“How many of you believe Martin Luther King Jr. is a great man? Everyone raised their hands.

“How many of you have read all his books?” No one raised a hand.

“How many of you consider yourselves Christians?” This being a historically black college in the South, virtually everyone raised their hands.

Then the speaker asked his last question: “How many of you have read the Bible in its entirety?” No hands were raised.

Right then, Brooks says, he made up his mind to read all of those works in full. They taught him that the ministry was an intellectually and socially serious vocation. He felt the call of two seemingly disparate paths: the ministry and the law. For a while, he struggled with how to reconcile the two.

After college, he was accepted to law school at Georgetown, and was all ready to go. Until, that is, he was offered a scholarship to attend Boston University’s School of Theology—Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater. He prayed on it—and then called Georgetown and told them he wasn’t coming.

He loved seminary. It confirmed for him that he could, in fact, do both: be a full-time lawyer firmly rooted in the church. “I felt like law was an expression of ministry.” While at BU, he met Dr. Alvan Johnson, then the pastor of Bethel AME Church in Bloomfield, Connecticut, who became his mentor—and father figure, after Brooks’s own father died. Johnson says he figured the young man would choose the pulpit life. “He had outstanding intellect, absolutely bright, well read, articulate. And he was comical. He had a magical sense of humor. And he’s always been committed to social justice.” All are qualities that would serve a minister well, Johnson says. But:  “He said he had a passion for the law. And I said, ‘Well, OK, go for it.’

“He’s a warrior. He’s not one of those people who will just jump in front of the camera. That’s not him. But he will lead the whole justice movement. He’s destined to lead it. We haven’t really seen the effects of his ability, not yet. He’s fearless.”

Yale’s law school was always in the back of Brooks’s mind. As a teen, he had told the wife of his town’s first black doctor that he was thinking about becoming an attorney. Then you must go to Yale, she told him. Her brother, Roger Demosthenes O’Kelly, was completely deaf and blind in one eye. Barred from attending Gallaudet University because he was African American, O’Kelly had instead enrolled at Yale, Class of 1912. Yale, O’Kelly’s sister told Brooks, was a very supportive place.

At Yale, Brooks found a mecca for black intellectuals, from Cornel West to bell hooks to Henry Louis Gates Jr. ’73. And “the school reminded me of seminary,” he says. “There was total academic freedom.”

After law school, he clerked for a federal judge. From there, he moved to the Department of Justice and attacked civil rights law with gusto. He secured what was then the largest government settlement for victims of housing discrimination; filed the government’s first suit against a nursing home, alleging housing discrimination based on race; and put in time with the Federal Communications Commission. He also served on New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s transition team, pushing for criminal justice reform and helping to get legislation passed protecting ex-felons from discrimination during job applications. Wasn’t the Republican Christie an unlikely choice? “I’m just a big believer about making no assumptions about your friends or your enemies,” says Brooks. Millennial civil rights activism has to be “inclusive and as ubiquitous as technology is today. It can’t just be the righteous few. There’s got to be an ever-growing many not just saying what’s wrong, but what can be made right.”

Inclusive, for the Justice Summer march, meant forging partnerships with, among others, the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, the AFL-CIO, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the National Women’s Law Center, and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. And it meant being willing to share the spotlight with Black Lives Matter activists. As Brooks sees it, the ad hoc youth movement is part of a continuum of activism. Julian Bond, the recently deceased chair of the NAACP, got his start cofounding the youth-led Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]. There’s no need to compete.

“Martin Luther King always said the NAACP was necessary,” says Brooks, “even as the SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] was necessary. When it started, the SCLC was the upstart movement. Then SNCC was the upstart movement. There’s always an upstart movement. Fifty years later, Black Lives Matter will be derided as an old-school movement.”

As the day winds on, Brooks engages in a little multitasking, giving an interview on his mobile phone as he marches through suburban Atlanta; the march is being covered by all the major national media and an abundance of smaller outlets. Behind him, people are starting to straggle a bit, some taking refuge from the heat in one of the rented buses that shadow the crew.

Weyman Fussell is among those still walking. He came of age in Atlanta at a time when civil rights activists were pushing hard against Jim Crow—but as a white kid, he was sympathetic but didn’t get involved. “Civil rights was in full bloom,” he says, “and I was clueless.” Now, at 70, the retired USDA executive feels compelled to make up for lost time. He heard Brooks talk about the march on the radio, and he drove from Annapolis, Maryland, to meet up with the march at the Georgia-Alabama border.

“I don’t know if it was him,” Fussell says, gesturing toward Brooks, “or the things he had to say, laying out the objectives of the march and the good of the movement. For me, that had resonance. I said to myself, ‘Let’s go out and validate that. It’s time to do some walking.’”

Those who join the march can spend as much or as little time on the road as they want. Each night, marchers crash at a designated synagogue or church or community center and participate in teach-ins. In each state they pass through, the teach-ins focus on one of the themes in the NAACP’s advocacy agenda: in Alabama, income inequality; in Georgia, education reform; in North Carolina—site of a protracted battle for voting rights—access to the ballot. In Virginia they hold a youth rally.

Any and all are welcome, and the inclusiveness isn’t just strategic; it’s part of the heritage. The NAACP was founded, back in 1909, by a group of white liberals and African Americans who were appalled by lynching. Prominent black leaders, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell, joined them. The goal: to end racial discrimination and to secure the rights of all citizens as guaranteed by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. Today’s NAACP hasn’t strayed far from those initial goals, says Brooks, but now its message comes via Facebook (over half a million followers), Twitter (118,000 followers), livestreaming, and Instagram.

It’s true that, just before he took over the reins, the NAACP laid off seven percent of its national staff due to budget shortfalls. But Brooks says he doesn’t worry about its future financial health. For one thing, he points out, beyond the Baltimore headquarters and the Washington, DC, office, “there are virtually no paychecks” in the satellite offices around the country. “These are all full volunteers. We are truly grassroots. We’re no inside-the-Beltway operation.”

Which is to say, he loves what he does. “It’s intellectually stimulating work, politically complicated work, and morally vexing work.” Politically complicated, because you’ve got to be strategic about which goals you pursue. Morally vexing, because how do you get your point across without turning off the ones who need to hear it the most? As an example, he cites the recent rash of black deaths at the hands of the men and women in blue: Michael Brown. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice. Eric Garner. Freddie Gray.

“We have people being profiled and victimized like it’s a spectator sport,” Brooks says. “How do you communicate that in a way that says, ‘Look, we don’t demonize anyone; particularly, we don’t demonize anyone who’s been charged to serve and protect.’ But how do you call out conduct that’s just unconstitutional and immoral to equal degree? How do you raise support for the work of the NAACP and not have to trim your sails?”

He’s still working through the answers to those questions. At heart, he says, he’s an optimist, and he truly believes that a lot of the racial unrest in the United States today—what he calls a “civil rights crisis”—amounts to growing pains on the road to progress. Two steps forward, one step back is still forward movement. But he’s convinced that movement has to be all about policy: specific changes that will have an actual impact on people’s lives. “Lamenting the existence of institutional racism is not the presence of a plan to actually dismantle it,” says Brooks.

So as his contingent of marchers makes its way toward the nation’s capital, he is clear about four pieces of legislation that he wants passed: the End Racial Profiling Act, which would create a national standard of policing; federal action to ensure that public schools are equitably funded; raising the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour; and the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would strengthen the Voting Rights Act, recently gutted by Supreme Court decisions.

“The point being, you have to have a plan to dismantle these structures that’s systematic and that brings people together,” he says. “Because we haven’t seen anything else that works. You have to look at the infrastructure of a problem to dismantle it. One could blow it up: there might be some collateral damage. We want to dismantle it, judiciously. Brick by brick. With a plan.”

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18 comments

  • lackofcommonsense
    lackofcommonsense, 7:35pm November 07 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    The government and religious leaders have failed us today!

  • Sean Felder
    Sean Felder, 1:49pm November 09 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    NAACP needs to step up,go after shady corporations like Madison Square Garden.They violate labor laws,discriminate minorities at workplace like Radio City Music Hall.I'm suing MSG at US District Court seeking backpay,punitive damages after 11 years of employment.

  • Regina Jones
    Regina Jones, 4:07pm November 11 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    Having worked with the NAACP on 13 NAACP Image Awards shows it gives me great pleasure to read this well written story about the Reverend Cornell William Brooks. He sounds like exactly what the NAACP and America needs at this time. He is old enough to have experience yet young enough to be optimistic. The NAACP is still an important part of what is needed to continue to work to end racism. It's still alive and well in America and it will take both a legal mind and a Christian mind to help lead our country out of the mental slavery that we continue to witness.

  • Fontana Deon Davis
    Fontana Deon Davis, 7:43pm November 11 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    Where are you all before something drastic happens. I live in Madison Fl. I don't see you guys in the hoods speaking to the young lost brothers and sisters. I guarantee you most don't even know what NAACP means. Stop trying to use situations just to be noticed. Age twelve and thirteen I was a member of NAACP in Gainesville FL. We were noticed in the community because we were involved. The memories I have of this organization does not exist any more. If there is a chapter in my hometown you are desperately needed. make yourselves known. OH yeah last but not least I didn't know until reviewing your page that there is a fee to want to help.

  • vw
    vw, 8:55pm November 13 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    Fontana Deon Davis nailed it! What is NAACP doing? I admit I'd given up on NAACP years ago. Two election cycles and this:

    Ben Carson Draws Laughs on Joke About Running From Police ‘Back in the Day Before They Would Shoot You’

  • Lorraine Tunnell
    Lorraine Tunnell, 8:37am December 03 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    I have be asking for NAACP help for almost a year now. They keep telling me that they will get to me and have not gotten to me as of yet. The NAACP needs to help people who need their help which is me. I have be complaining to them for a year still have not received a call back from them as of yet. 3024948710 my number please tell me why you have not tried to help me yet. Need help bad.

  • Don't Dislike Get Like.. #Still Fighting for justice
    Don't Dislike Get Like.. #Still Fighting for justice, 7:45pm December 06 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    I understand that the NAACP has changed a lot during the years. However, I don't understand the negative reports from those who have given up on them. For instance, those who write that they can remember when they were a member or even remember what the NAACP use to do. What have you all been doing to be proactive to support the movement or your community? It's appalling to see how quickly people are ready to give up and not put forth lasting efforts to become more proactive in support of the vision and the very essence of what the NAACP stands for. It's one thing to say that you are for and organization and go the whole way and another thing to say that you are for an organization and not continue the course. Clearly, the fights that they fight are battles that take months, years, and even decades before something can actually be done. It's a process. They are one organization of many who are actually doing what they have to do to stay afloat. It's people like those who are quick to complain and expect for the NAACP to be at THEIR immediate call. The issues of America and the culture of our society is way more complicated then them being able to address EVERY issue that they are presented with. It disgusts me to know that the wannabe "soldiers" or "warriors" who may have started off as if they were going to contribute to what the association is about, then finds themselves on the other end making negative reports about them. There are bigger issues out there to fight. I still believe what they stand for and I also believe that they are doing the best they can with what they have. To those who have something negative to say about this organization, tell me this, what are you CURRENTLY doing to combat the major issues that they are currently fighting to bring about justice?

  • Don't Dislike Get Like.. #Still Fighting for justice
    Don't Dislike Get Like.. #Still Fighting for justice, 7:47pm December 06 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    BTW- The article was extraordinary!

  • Shamel Houston
    Shamel Houston, 6:18am December 08 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    Please help me! MY NAME IS SHAMEL HOUSTON ; I am a 32 year old single mother of two kids with a disability.My tears and pain are beyond unbearable. So many of my civil liberties have been violated and so many people are againest my kids and i.we have been homeless twice already.They keep trying to get me kicked of the section 8 program they have already gottem away with doing it once and made it looked like i owed them money i didnt based on lies people have told.They keep trying every thing they can even my own biological father is helping them. It is so wrong, but no one can see this.my kids have been bullied i habe been bullied and threatened and anyone who helps me also gets threatened. No on likes us.I keep trying to leave or port it instead they keep lying to make me stay hoping they will catch me up some way some how to get me kickec off.im so tired and so scared. My hair is so thin.i kerp looseing so much weight, i cry non stop i cannot sleep im afraid my children will be hurt! Please help me somebody please!

  • Shamel Houston
    Shamel Houston, 6:28am December 08 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    I live i. Gainesville,florida please help me they never stop only for a little while all of our civil liberties have been violated and the police have been called so mant time yet no arrest have been made and the sneaky keep sending people after us they are destroying our lives over sectio 8 and they have help relatives diging up peoples personal incormation within the public school system

  • MINISTER ALBERTA FERGUS
    MINISTER ALBERTA FERGUS, 10:39am December 15 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    I RESENT THE WAY MANY OF THESE ORGANIZATIONS RESPOND TO THE NEEDLESS AND POOR CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY. IT SEEMS THAT THESE ORGANIZATIONS ONLY COME TO THE RESCUE OF THOSE IN POLITICAL POSITIONS OR THOSE ABLE TO DONATE LARGE CONTRIBUTIONS. I READ A FEW COMMENTS AND WAS TOTALLY DISGUSTED AT THE REPLIES WHICH WAS QUITE DEROGATIVE AND WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO HAS LITTLE AND/OR NO COMPASSION. AS A 64 YEAR OLD AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE I HAVE SEEN THE STIGMA OF RACIAL INJUSTICES AND HAVE BEEN A VICTIM OF IT ALSO. HOWEVER, HAVING BEEN STIGMATIZED BECAUSE OF THE COLOR OF MY SKIN I HAVE LEARNED TO BE COMPASSIONATE AND LESS DOG MATIC. I DONOT FEEL THAT THESE NON-PROFITS ORGANIZATIONS SHOULD CHOOSE WHO THEY WILL HELP AND THAT NO PERSON SHOULD HAVE TO BELONG TO IT AS A MEANS TO GET HELP. MANY PEOPLE DIED FOR THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES THAT AFRICAN AMERICANS HAVE TODAY SO ALL PEOPLE REGARDLESS SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET HELP AS A MINISTER I REACH OUT TO MANY WITHOUT ANY DISTINCTION BECAUSE THAT WHAT GOD PUT ME IN THE MINISTRY FOR AND PLUS I ENJOY SEEING PEOPLE SMILE. I CONSIDER MYSELF A BURDEN BEARER AND I KNOW GOD WILL NEVER GIVE ME MORE THAN I CAN BEAR AND I BEAR MANY CROSSES SO OTHERS CAN SLEEP AT NIGH PEACEFULLY. I AM GLAD WHEN I SEE OTHER FAITH AND HOPE IS RESTORED EVEN WHEN IT SEEMS THERE IS NO HOPE OR NO WAY. MOST OF THES ORGANIZATIONS ARE FILLED WITH ABSENT CARING CONCERNED PEOPLE WHO ONLY OBJECTIVE IS TO FILL THEIR POCKETS AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS. MONEY IS AND SHOULD NEVER BE THE OBJECTIVE WHEN IT COMES TO HELPING OTHERS BECAUSE WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN AND WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND. EVERY DOG HAS IT DAY AND TO THOSE WHO FEEL THAT THEY HAVE NO NEED TO WORRY OR FRET PLEASE CHECK YOUR SELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF.

  • David S Ham
    David S Ham, 10:05am December 23 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    I was stop by a cop for a brake light out.He smiled the sent of weed in the car wend I
    roll down the window.He asked me an my son to get out of the car.He asked did I have any
    weed in the car,I said a haft of a joint in the ash tray.He ask could he serece my car.I
    said yes.He came out of my car with 5 38 bulites I pick on a carpet job, an was going to
    give them to the man I was working for,but I had to go get my son from work.The sheriff
    then walked up to me an handcuffed me an said I was a convicted felony in possession of
    ammo.A Forgery&Uttering charge I had back in 1987.After arresting me in his car he said
    I guess it was a bad day to be driving a Park Avenew,because I was looking for a white
    Buick Century.I tried to have my rights restored in 2008 but never heard back from any
    body about that.Help plaese.

  • Lorenzo Lewis
    Lorenzo Lewis, 7:30pm December 28 2015 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    Supporting the NAACP should not be looked at as maybe,but it should be our obligation and Honor to support such an Awesome Organization during the work of God across the board of Civic Right,Jesus was the Greatest prophet against unrighteousness,and we surely would not have the freedom that we enjoy right now if it had not been for #1 God and the NAACP,there is still more work to do,we the peoples as one must continue to join together to fight against all unrighteousness,and Justice where ever it Ugly Head lift up,and we will win because Evil can not stand to long with Righteousness,Stay Strong my Brothers and Sisters and not just speaking of a certain color of skin,but of all who is in Christ Jesus regardless of skin tone.

  • Isaiah j hopkins
    Isaiah j hopkins , 4:15am January 14 2016 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    The Naacp has been nothing more than a huge dissapointment to me. They want to improve on the quality of life for blacks, well its time they stop only looking for the events that get them national coverage and money and see the real needs and concerns in the black community. Its a dam shame that i have made several attempts to reach someone one in there legal department or anyone at that matter and have been unsuccessful. Its time you guys step up, there are blacks who truly need help and the Naacp is looking right pass them. The most interesting thing is I'm writing this and I probably won't even get a response back from the Naacp. But i do agree there needs to be changes and you guys need to step up.

  • Rosie Lyons
    Rosie Lyons, 1:49pm January 18 2016 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    How many African-American's are still wondering why, after almost 60 years later, the Colored people are still marching? Well let me open the door to truth, and it's up to the reader to take off those soon to be 60 year old marching shoes and walk through this door of truth.

    Let me begin with the Children of Israel, who, when they were on their way to their promise land, had to remain in the wilderness for 40 years. And the reason they had to stay in that wilderness was because along the way they committed sin: And as it was with the Children of Israel; so it is with the Colored people.

    For decades, we have had God front and center when it come to the Civil Rights Movement. Well let me give you a News flash! God was not a part of the Civil Rights Movements; nor is he a part of the many movements today. I say this because God is not a partaker of any man's sin, and the Civil Rights Movement was an act of sin, and so are the many Movements today: for while the motives may have been right: their way was wrong then, and it's wrong today.

    Let me clarify: Now we all know that the Jim Crow Law was wrong, but the truth is, even though the law was a law of injustice, it was still the law; therefore when the Colored people became their own court of justice, they acted in violation of the law. Also when Colored people entered the places where the words "White only" was visible to one's eye; they went beyond the boundary line, which had been set by the Jim Crow Law.

    Since the majority of our N.A.A.C.P. leaders are preachers of the gospel, I will speak in their language. In Bible language, what the people of the Civil Rights Movement did was trespass and it's known that in Bible language, to trespass is a sin. Now Colored people saw the White's as being wrong in the stand they took during that Movement, but the sin was committed by the Colored people: For even though the law was an unjust law, and should not have been, it was the law, and the White's were upholding what was law.

    Then after committing the act of trespassing; Colored people forced the Colored children to also go beyond the boundary line, and become intruders; when they sent them into the "all White School"; thus building up more resentment. Now the law was wrong, and the behavior of the Colored people were wrong, but the White's had the law on their side, and even Jesus gave respect to the law, even when he did not agree (Matthew 23:23).

    So should African-Americans want to see "Change come to America" then we must undo what was done almost 60 years ago, by asking our White brothers and sisters to forgive us, and then take the matter by way of the courts, and if we do this, then the Lord will fight on the side of his African-American people.

    What we, as a race of people, want is "equal privileges"; for we have always had equal rights, but denied the privilege of using them. Now the only way we are going to obtain these equal privileges is through court, because our White brothers and sisters live by the law, be that law right or wrong. So do we want our privileges back, or do we want to continue be a partaker of the Ferguson Sin?

    N.A.A.C.P., ARE WE KILLERS OR PEACEMAKERS?

  • Rosie Lyons
    Rosie Lyons, 11:09pm January 18 2016 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    To our Civil Rights Organizations,
    Do you not see this President trying to save the lives and freedom of our children, by taking a stand against gun-violence? Once N.A.A.C.P. had a vision and a voice, but now they have neither.

    Now concerning the gun control issue, the reason gun control has not been brought under control is because we are going about it the wrong way. We are trying to use laws to curtail the children: forgetting that it was a 1974 law that opened the door to this floodgate of violence.

    Let me go back to the days before the Civil Rights Movement when our children wore the shoes of obedience. The adult jails and prisons were not filled with our children, and neither was the juvenile Center. But after the Civil Rights Movement ended, a law called "The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act" was conceived and it was this law that removed these obedient shoes from the feet of our children.

    It was fear of this law that stopped the African-American parents from whipping their children; children who, as a result, do not know how to love; nor do they know real love. The Bible give us permission to whip our children, and says if we don't whip them, we do not love them(Proverb 13:24; 19:18). So what we are witnessing today is the behaviors of a love starved generation; for in 1974 we,the parents were no longer permitted to love our children according to the plan of God, and this is the results.

    You do not have to take my word as truth, just compare the behavior of our children before this law was passed, with the change in their behavior a few years after it was passed (especially black on black killings). Now for whatever reason such law was written; whether it was known that every time a young male is killed, many innocent unborn children (housed in the pouch of the males, are also killed or not; such a law has and will continue to destroy the population of the African-American race.

    Answer: Free the parents: remove the handcuffs.

  • wilma walker
    wilma walker, 12:24pm January 19 2016 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    I am very concern anout the NAACP, lack of response to people being wrongfully convicted,every day someone is being released from prison because they were wrongfully convicted, yet you never hear the NAACP adress this issue. Kinda makes you wonder who's side they are on.

  • Rosie Lyons
    Rosie Lyons, 3:25pm January 19 2016 | Ico flag Flag as inappropriate

    Topic: My Children
    Message Subject: We traded our children. Was it worth it?

    The most powerful weapon against us is our own lack of knowledge. Teachers are being paid more, but children are learning less (especially African-Americans), and many have already lost the desire in what was and still is, an all white school system. African-Americans were learning more when there were just two classrooms and just two black teachers.

    Let's go back to the time before schools integrated: back to the time when we had all white schools and all black schools; each giving their all to their own kind. But this type of teaching stopped in the all white schools when the two schools integrated: Stopped because it was the white authority's way(in those days) of withholding knowledge from black children.

    That spirit of not wanting blacks to learn had not yet been done away with; and because of this, did corrupt the minds of those who were to shape these young minds. Also when these two schools integrated, blacks were placed into the all white schools, but no room was made for them on the all white curriculum; neither was any room made for the black teachers. And here we are, almost 60 years later, and black children are still attending an all white school system. And as long as there is no room made for the black children, they will continue to attend an all white school system, when it comes to "race recognition".

    To the blacks who have accepted what they have today as being freedom; here is a Newsflash! All black schools had their own basketball, softball, and football teams. We had our own bands, choirs, cheerleaders, and our own National Anthem (Lift Every Voice and Sing); along with all black teachers, who put all they had into us, and there was no school drop-out problem, and the black children carried books and not guns.

    What happen to our curriculum? What happen to all of those black teachers? Where did they all go after the schools integrated? Yes our children are sitting in seats next to white students, but at what cost? If you stop dreaming, for a moment, you will realize why there was an agreement for school integration.

    My thoughts say it was to monitor our children's education, and today, we see school drop-outs, and pushed-out: we see the hearse taking them to the cemetery, and the paddy wagon taking them to the many jails and prisons; which was not a part of the African-American make-up before the Civil Rights Movement. Have we not yet learned that our white America's weapon is making and creating laws? Yes, while we are organizing marches; they are making and creating laws.

    So what we have is "Law v. Marches" when it should be "Knowledge v. Knowledge." Yes the late Dr. King had a dream, but if we want to see that mountain top, our today's Civil Rights leaders need visions (Proverb 29:18).

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