Vol. 73/No. 29      August 3, 2009

Several leading Democratic and Republican party elected and appointed officials also spoke during the weeklong meeting. They included U.S. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Charles Rangel, New York senator Charles Schumer, New York governor David Paterson, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Republican national chairman Michael Steele.

While conceding that the “pain of discrimination is still felt in America,” Obama struck themes of “responsibility” that were at the center of a Father’s Day speech he gave in 2008 holding individual Black families responsible for education, nutrition, and health care of children.

“We have to say to our children,” the president told the NAACP convention, that living in a “poor neighborhood” with “crime and gangs” is no reason to “get bad grades—that is not a reason to cut class—that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No excuses! No excuses!”

“To parents,” Obama said, “You can’t just contract out parenting.” He said parents must take responsibility for helping their children learn, turn off the Xbox, and attend parent-teacher conferences.

Obama said African Americans continue to face “structural inequalities” left by the nation’s legacy of discrimination. “Reducing” those structural inequalities, he said, has been made more difficult by the state of the economy. The president said that his administration’s economic proposals would “lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity that will put opportunity within the reach of not just African Americans, but all Americans.”

At the public opening of the convention NAACP Board of Directors chairman Julian Bond hailed the election of Obama. “We now have arrived at the intersection of hope and change—and a black man is directing traffic,” he said.

Bond also made note of the precarious situation facing what he called middle class Blacks. “The fragility of middle class life for black Americans is illustrated by our downward mobility. Nearly half of blacks born into the middle class 40 years ago have descended into poverty or near poverty as adults compared to only 16 percent of whites.”

In his keynote address NAACP president and CEO Benjamin Jealous pointed to the Supreme Court decision in the New Haven, Connecticut, firefighters’ case that struck a blow against affirmative action. “This decision is a step backward for equal opportunity in employment,” Jealous said.

Jealous also pointed to two cases of African Americans on death row. He called on the delegates to continue to support the fight to win a new trial for Troy Davis and to win his freedom. Davis has been on death row for 18 years after being convicted in a frame-up trial for killing a white cop in Savannah, Georgia. “There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime and seven of the nine witnesses have recanted or contradicted their original testimony, several saying they were coerced,” Jealous said. “Beyond a shadow of a doubt, this man is innocent.” The NAACP has filed an amicus brief in the case.

Jealous also noted that the Missouri conference of the NAACP has demanded clemency to stop the execution of Reggie Clemons. Clemons was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder of two women who drowned in the Mississippi River.

NAACP board member Harold Crumpton stated that Clemons was “tortured by police” into making a confession. As in the Davis case there was no evidence linking Clemons to the crime, “no fingerprints, no DNA, no hair or fiber samples,” Crumpton noted.

Jealous also denounced the action of the Valley Club in a Philadelphia suburb for excluding Black youth from their swimming facility earlier this month.  
 
 
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