BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
NEW YORK - The NAACP promoted restrictions on firearms as
a way to prevent racist attacks on African-Americans and
other oppressed nationalities as one of the themes at its
90th national convention. Some 3,000 delegates and observers
attended the event held in New York City, July 10-15.
Attendance at the convention dropped about 40 percent from
the previous year.
"The [National Rifle Association] used their considerable influence to block any effective gun control legislation in the 106th Congress," said NAACP president Kweisi Mfume during his keynote address July 12. He said the recent racist shooting in Indiana and Illinois by ultrarightist Benjamin Smith was the "inevitable result."
Mfume announced the NAACP was filing a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the firearms industry to promote greater "responsibility and accountability." He said the NAACP was not pursuing financial compensation from the litigation. The suit was filed July 16 in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York.
The New York convention also adopted a resolution to establish an "official FBI E-mail address" for reporting "hate crimes" and "hate E-mail."
Another major initiative Mfume outlined in his address was a campaign to press for the inclusion of oppressed nationalities in a leading or starring role in some of the 26 new television shows for the fall season. He said the NAACP would be "calling on every member of the House and Senate to support congressional hearings on whether networks are denying" equal opportunities.
One of the workshops at the gathering included presentations on voting rights and electoral redistricting, which has eliminated some Black voter majorities that existed in a few Congressional districts in the South. The NAACP announced a campaign to register 4 million voters for the 2000 elections.
The convention deliberations took place as the Boston School Committee voted July 14 to scuttle the city's school desegregation plan. That move would end the busing program next year. At its 1997 convention the NAACP reaffirmed its support for school desegregation plans, including support for busing programs.
One resolution approved by the delegates called for U.S. president William Clinton to pardon the court-martialed survivors of the 1944 explosion at the Port Chicago naval base in northern California. The measure would also restore benefits to surviving soldiers and widows. All the men handling ammunition at the military base were Black sailors placed in labor gangs because of the Jim Crow segregation policy of the U.S. Navy. As result of forced speed up and dangerous working conditions, a ship being loaded with 5,000 tons of ammunition blew up July 17, killing 327 men. Fifty of the sailors were court-martialed and found guilty of mutiny by an all-white jury when they refused to load ammunition after seeing the effects of the blast.
The convention included keynote speeches by two Clinton administration officials, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Vice President Albert Gore.
Albright referred to the recent U.S.-NATO assault on Yugoslavia as she called for using the "lessons of Kosova" to guide U.S. policy on Africa. She released a State Department report at the convention titled, "Arms and Conflict in Africa," which lays the groundwork for future U.S. military intervention in African countries.
There was little discussion at the convention about the stepped-up resistance among working people such as the strike at the Newport News, Virginia, shipyard, which has a predominantly Black workforce. While a resolution was passed supporting overtime pay for farm workers in Maryland, the organization also made a major point of publicly accepting donations from major corporations such as AT&T.
"There needs to be some serious checks and balances on the contributions we receive from corporations, so they don't take over," said Tammy Johnson, an NAACP member from Milwaukee who belongs to the Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 9. "AT&T is continuously trying to break the communication workers union, blaming the union for demanding more raises, when they raise their rates," she said.