Today is the last day of the 113th NAACP National Convention, an event being held in Atlantic City for the first time since that pivotal year, 1968.
The United States was in the midst of the Vietnam war, in which Black soldiers were over-represented in casualties. It was the year of the assassination of the most famous civil rights leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and of Sen. Robert Kennedy, a presidential candidate and an undeniable friend of the movement. Then, there was that other convention in Chicago, where the Democrats chose their candidate, and protesters, mostly young and mostly peaceful, were beaten by police in the street.
Those 366 days 54 years ago are a tough act to follow, and 2022 may or may not fill the bill. Consider, though, this is first time since 2019 that the NAACP is meeting nationally in person. It’s the first time the organization has gathered since the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer; since several states took action making voting more difficult for minorities, the young and seniors; since excessive post-pandemic gun violence further ravaged Black and brown communities; and since the U.S. Supreme Court reduced reproductive rights and made it harder for the poor to access abortions in several states.
In other words, although it’s not 1968, there’s a lot on the NAACP plate. Still, there are questions about to what degree the group is relevant. Those go back the to the pre-Civil Rights Act days, when younger, and far more impatient African Americans began viewing the NAACP as their grandparents’ outdated model of activism.
Old-line NAACP chapters, including some in South Jersey, were faced with newly organized splinter groups promising to do more, more quickly. By the 1980s, there were financial struggles at the national level.
However, it’s wrong to see the NAACP today as totally diminished. It has remained a civil rights organization that many white people are willing to join. And, it has the legacy of lions of the movement, such as Gloucester County’s late Irene Hill-Smith, who fought for equality until their deaths.
Hill-Smith, who passed away at age 85 in 2011, served on the NAACP national board as well as longtime chair of the Gloucester County Branch. And, it was Hill-Smith, not some young upstart, who was arrested multiple times at segregation protests, went undercover to expose conditions at migrant farm housing, and got along with some of the county’s most conservative Republicans.
Although national concerns are many, it’s at this local level that the NAACP can shine the most. Whether it’s police treating rowdy white and Black youths differently at the Bridgewater Commons Mall, or fighting racial violence social media posts allegedly made by a Woodstown High School student, NAACP chapters are at the forefront of rational guidance toward resolution. Note, also, that the Atlantic City Convention Center, where the big meeting is being held, was constructed near a connector tunnel to the Marina and Brigantine that opened in 2001. The project physically tore apart Westside, one of the city’s few middle-class Black neighborhoods, mainly for the convenience of Donald Trump and other casino moguls.
The Atlantic City backdrop, of course, raises the frequent issue of whether the casinos have been good or bad overall for city residents, many of them Black and Hispanic, nearly all of them low-income. Obviously, the casinos brought jobs but, despite targeted efforts, failed to rejuvenate or stop the decline of off-the-Boardwalk neighborhoods. Perhaps this is Ground Zero for the national debate about gentrification.
Key speakers like Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., (via video), didn’t touch much on this local stuff. Instead, they focused on getting out to vote this year, fighting for abortion rights and further efforts to reduce gun violence. At least until Nov. 8, the date of the midterm elections, the relevance of the NAACP will be largely determined by what the 8,000 attendees do once they exit Atlantic City.
If they leave energized and ready to motivate others, the organization’s slogan for the confab, #ThisIsPower, will actually have some strength behind it.
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