Some 60 people, mostly members of the NAACP youth group, rallied June 4 in front of the university. William Jawando, a graduate law student, told protesters that more than 30 students on the campus had signed up to join the NAACP youth chapter. He noted that the administration stalled on making a decision regarding the status of the group until the school session was over. He said that he had received more than 200 e-mail messages of support from students.

In addition to their opposition to the NAACP’s defense of a woman’s right to choose, Jawando said, university officials argued that the group should be denied recognition because there are two other campus organizations that involve Black students.

“It is the height of insensitivity for them to say there are already two organizations on the campus representing Black students,” Jawando said, drawing boos of condemnation against campus officials. School administrators also told Jawando that the NAACP’s support for abortion rights “would not be consistent with the mission of the university or the Roman Catholic Church.”

“We made it clear we are not starting a chapter of Planned Parenthood,” Jawando said. “Our business is civil rights.”

The NAACP youth leader said the student group would continue to fight for its rights on the campus and will seek the support of other student groups. “We will rally for as long and as often as it takes—and if necessary we will take legal action against the school administration,” Jawando said.

Jawando was joined in the rally by NAACP president Kweisi Mfume. “This is blatant discrimination in its most naked form,” Mfume said. He noted that the NAACP has youth chapters at prominent Catholic-run universities, which include Georgetown, Trinity, Fordham, and St. Johns.

“Jim Crow Sr. is dead,” said Mfume, referring to the system of racial segregation in the South that was ended by the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s. “But Jim Crow Jr. is alive and well at Catholic University.”

Catholic University president Rev. David M. O’Connell met with Mfume on June 16, according to the Washington Post. In the meeting O’Connell reiterated the administration’s view that there are already two campus groups representing Black students at the campus and that the NAACP’s support of the April 25 abortion rights march runs counter to the university’s mission and to church doctrine. But O’Connell agreed to reconsider the decision to bar the civil rights youth group when students return to the campus this fall, the Post reported.

Jawando said NAACP supporters do not want further delays and are planning 90 days of “picketing and protest” to press for reversing the ban.  
 
 
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