On the eve of the event, a press conference was held announcing plans for a national demonstration on August 26, marking the 37th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington led by Martin Luther King. Alfred Sharpton, who hosted the press conference, along with NAACP president Kweisi Mfume and Martin Luther King III, who is president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said the focus of the action in Washington will be opposition to cop brutality and the racist police harassment known as racial profiling.

Both issues struck a chord among many participants in the NAACP convention. The delegates approved a resolution that condemned racial profiling and police violence and urged "all NAACP units to support" the August demonstration.

The elections, and support for the Democratic candidates in particular, marked the gathering. In his opening remarks, NAACP chairman Julian Bond declared, "We will recommit ourselves to the most important task we can accomplish this year--registering voters, educating voters, and making sure those voters go to the polls." NAACP president Mfume added that registering 4 million new voters for this election will be the organization's "central arena."

The convention featured presentations by three presidential candidates, Democrat Albert Gore, Republican George W. Bush, and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, as well as Hillary Clinton, Democratic senatorial candidate in New York, and President William Clinton, among other big-business politicians.

Convention delegates also discussed and passed resolutions on an array of political issues--strengthening public education and opposing voucher programs, protesting assaults on Fourth Amendment rights, and defending school desegregation, affirmative action, Social Security, and health care.

One issue in the discussion was the death penalty. Mfume said the NAACP "calls for a moratorium on the death penalty," although no resolution was presented on that question. Bond said the NAACP has asked governors of all states with death row inmates to order a suspension of capital punishment.

Delegates reaffirmed the association's 1999 resolution condemning "the Confederate battle flag or the Confederate battle emblem being flown over, displayed in or on any public site or space, building, or any emblem, flag standard or as part of any public communication." They also passed a resolution introduced by the Virginia branch condemning state recognition of the Confederacy. Virginia officially recognizes a holiday for the Confederacy.

Mfume told those attending the meeting, "There will be no compromise. We will continue to boycott the state of South Carolina until the flag comes down!"

Last January the NAACP launched an economic boycott of South Carolina to demand the Confederate flag be removed from atop the state capitol. It also led a Martin Luther King Day demonstration in the state capital of Columbia that drew 50,000 people. In face of the outpouring, state legislators blinked, deciding to remove the flag from the capitol dome and place it in a Confederate memorial on the capitol grounds.

At a well-attended workshop on police brutality, several participants told of encounters with the police. Edith Meyers of Altoona, Pennsylvania, reported she and her family were stopped while driving to the NAACP convention. "What kind of profile were they using?" she asked. "There was nothing about us to say we were involved in drugs or any crime. They didn't even apologize. Just told us we could go," she reported angrily.

Police agencies across the country use "profiles" that rely heavily on skin color in order to harass Blacks, Latinos, and Asians in the name of looking out for "potential criminal activity." Mfume reported that U.S. Customs agents, using such profiles, had stopped some 400 Black women, some of whom were strip-searched, simply on the basis of their braided hair.