Address at the 90th Annual NAACP Convention, New York, New York, 1999 July 11

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90th Annual NAACP Convention Address Copyright 1999 by Julian Bond New York, New York - July 11, 1999

It is an honor to stand before you, at our 90th anniversary convention, as the Chair of the Board of the NAACP.

We have gathered near historic ground.

It was only a few blocks from here that three people met, during the first week of 1909, to form what would become the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. One was the descendant of abolitionists, the second was Jewish, and the third was a Southerner - whose mother's people were Kentucky slaveholders, as my father's people were Kentucky slaves.

The immediate result of that first meeting was the issuance of a Call - on February 12, 1909, the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The Call took stock of the nation's progress since 1865, asking as we ask today: "How far has it gone in assuring to each and every citizen, irrespective of color, the equality of opportunity and equality before the law, which underlie our American institutions and are guaranteed by the Constitution?"

Calling upon "all [the] believers in democracy" to gather for a national conference, the manifesto was signed by, among others, Jane Adams, William Lloyd Garrison, John Dewey, Ida Wells Barnett, and W. E. B. DuBois.

Those "believers in democracy" would cheer our gathering here, as we celebrate "90 Years of Making Democracy Work."

As much as anything, your presence validates our past.

The original incorporation papers of the NAACP listed as its

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goals:

"To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or radical prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored cititzens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunites for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, and complete equality before the law."

That remains our mission today.

Of course, our world today is very different from the world our founders saw, although in ways both large and small it remains the same. From 1905 to 1914, there were a million immigrants to this country each year. That is the same number of immigrants per year since 1992. Similarly, the black percentage of the population is today what it was in the beginning of the century: 12 percent. That population is distributed differently now, however; then 90% of the nation's black population lived in the South, now only half do.

Then there were no blacks in the Congress of the United States, only one black principal in the public schools of New York City, and 92 lynchings - nearly 100 ritual human sacrifies - each year.

The immediate spark for the founding of the NAACP was the Springfield riot of 1908 when African-Americans were lynched within a half-mile of the only home Abraham Lincoln ever owned and within two miles of his grave.

The Springfield riot was only one of a series of horrific events that signaled the lowest in black life since slavery ended.

Beginning in Mississippi in 1890, then in South Carolina in 1895, Louisiana in 1898 - by 1910 state constitutions in North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, Georgia and Oklahoma barred black people from voting.

"The law, the courts, the schools, and almost every institution in the South favored whites. This was white supremacy."

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Black people were slaves in every way but legally. Most could not vote. Nearly everyone who had any education at all attended inadequate, segregated schools, and then only a few months a year. Most could not hope to gain an education beyond high school. Most worked as farmers or semi-skilled laborers. Few owned the land they farmed, or even the homes in which they lived.

DuBois described black life and the world a black man might see:

"He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance, - not simply of letters but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and his feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home."²

Six years after the NAACP was born, the nation's first full-length feature film, "The Birth of a Nation," appeared. It was perfect propaganda, a distorted epic of the Civil War and Reconstruction, with blacks portrayed as lustful and ignorant and slaveholders as wise and benevolent. The movie received a private showing in Woodrow Wilson's White House and eventually would be seen by over 200 million people. With cinematic techniques that gave it a sheen of historical authenticity, the movie's spectacular lies became historical truth - southern virtue, honesty and civility destroyed by barbaric blacks and covetous carpetbaggers. Not coincidentally, the years 1915 to 1924 saw Ku Klux Klan membership rise to 4.5 million.

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But the movie also galvanized the NAACP, which led the fight against the film's distribution. Dr. DuBois and his colleagues pressured the mayors of New York and Boston to delay and suspend the film's showing. Ehile some saw the movie adn became members of the Ku Klux Klan, many others protested the movie adn became members of the NAACP.

Then, as now, nativists argued for further restrictions on immigration, seeking an ethnically pure America.

Then, segregationists sponsored laws mandating the separation of black and whites in all public places; now, neo-segregationists sponsor laws mandating the end of affirmative action in all public institutions

Then, as now, racism masquerading as science proclaimed the genetic inferiority of black people, a welcome antidote to the status anxieties of the shrinking majority.

And then as now, racial scapegoating became a substitute for real solutinos to complex problems, reminding us that while so much changes, too much remians the same.

Ninety years is a grand old age for a woman or man; it is only a fraction in the life-time of a nation.

We are such a young nation so recently removed from slavery; only my father's generation stands between Julian Bond and human bondage; I am the grandson of slave, as are many in this hall.

The Civil War was fought over whether blacks and whites shared a commin humanity. Less than 10 years after it ended, the country sided with the losers, and agreed to continue black subjugation for almost 100 years.

We are now asked to belivee that 200 years of being someone's property, followed by 100 years of oppression in the South and bigotry in the NOrth can be wiped away by htree decades of half-hearted remediation. We are asked to believe that no permanent damage was done to the oppressors or the oppressed. We are asked to believe that we Americans are now a healed and whole people.

To believe that is the victory of hope over experiance.

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We are told that when black people did not magically leap from the back of the bus to ownership of the bus company, it was because they were deficient or the system had been too good to them - white benevolence had made them weak.

To believe that is the victory of self-delusion over common sense.

Let us call white supremacy by its name and call it what it is: a massive system of racial preferences, a vast affirmative action program for whites. It has one name and one aim: to crush the human development of an entire population. It began with slave-catching in Africa, and it continues to the present day.

It is only by acknowledging the name, the nature and the scope of the problem that we can measure the magnitude of our success.

It has been our refusal to compromise on the fundamental issues of justice and equality that has led to these victories.

One of our founders, Mary White Ovington, described how the early NAACP resisted compromising its principles:

"... the effort was continually made", she said, "to induce it to side-step the main issue, to unite with the conservatives, to relax a liite in its uncompromising tone."

"Had it done this, however, it would have slipped into oblivion. Its refusal to compromise brought it steadily increasing Negro support, and while it has never won over the great majority of the white friends of the Negro, it has held its original group together and each year has added a number of important, whole -hearted white men and women."

Far from slipping into oblivion, the NAACP has become the largest grass roots civil rights organization in the Untied States, overwhelmingly endorsed by black Americans as the most effective organizatin working in their interest." ³

We welcome all whole-hearted women and men - of whatever race, age or religion - to join us. We know that colored people come in all colors in this country. We know we move forward fastest when we move forward together. We know we cannot afford