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"Raising the NAACP'S voice"

Well, the last time I checked the NAACP's North Carolina site, it was still prominently featuring a link to a defense of the AV and her false accusations.

"When religion is used to divide and destroy, that is not what Christ wanted," Barber said in measured words. "Prophetic religion says there's something beyond personal piety. There's something called public morality."

Imagine : a church meeting in which the Aryan nations and the White Power movement share the rostrum with the ACLU and the Democratic and Republican state chairmen, and the keynote address is given by a neo-Nazi leader. Imagine that all present shout, dance, and sing, and hold hands and call one another "brother" and "sister", based upon the random accident of their skin coloration.

Imagine: a district attorney goes beserk and violates every ethic of his profession to railroad three innocent black students on a charge of rape; he continues his persecution with fanatical devotion,
even after DNA results provide proof in the most absolute sense of their innocence. The white community continues to support him and demands only white jurors for the trial; the Klan marches through the town threatening the defendants' lives; the Klan leader holds a private meeting with the DA
(the details of which are not revealed to the public); white student leaders demand the defendants be convicted anyway "because of what has gone on before", and the need to "send a message"; and the ministerial council of white churches offer their pulpits to the Klan leader and other white cult leaders (some of whom call openly for the complete extermination of blacks).

Impossible?

But try reversing those colors, and then see where the NAACP has been and what it has done.

"Barber incites people with his rousing appeals for action, often reciting Scripture or invoking the words of Martin Luther King Jr., the old family favorite."

What words, these?

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

"A right delayed is a right denied."

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
.
"The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict."

"The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice."

"The time is always right to do what is right."

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

"It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important."

[Understanding Durham politics]*

"NEGRO Leadership in a Southern City"
Burgess, M. Elaine, author.
The University of North Carolina Press 1960, 1962 ppb 1964
ex libris, Malcolm X Liberation University Library.

[*This 1950's study is based on Durham, North Carolina.
The Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People
is thinly disguised as the Crescent Negro Council.
The author changed names to protect anonymity.]

Bloc voting, Negro p. 66.

"The political strength of the sub-community lies with
the Democratic Party organization. Negro leaders feel that
this is where it must remain, at least for the present, if they
are to have access to bargaining power. But as V. O. Key
has pointed out, the politics of the "one-party" South is
actually a politics of faction. This is true in Mid-South
State at the local, county, and state levels. Conservative
and moderate-liberal wings of the party vie for control of
party committees. Though city politics is supposedly non-
partisan, there too the anti-Negro and anti-labor factions
of the conservative wing exist, and the party has often taken
the views of these two factions into account, as well as those
of the moderate businessmen and professionals. It
is with this latter faction that the bulk of the Negro com-
munity has allied itself politically.

In 1953 political organization was effective enough in
the minority community to elect the first Negro to city
office. As in many urban centers of the South, Negroes
in Crescent City now hold the balance of power because of
their block voting, a situation that irritates and frustrates
many of the whites. The white newspapers usually make
much of the united Negro political activity in their reports
on community elections and often suggest that certain is-
sues are doomed by virtue of Negro opposition even before
votes have actually been cast. One has only to scrutinize
the tabulations of voting by precincts to see that bloc
voting has been, in reality, quite effective. For example,
in the 1957 elections the moderate candidate for mayor,
incumbent Murphy, received 621 out of 658 votes in the
largest Negro precinct and 549 out of 573 in the
second largest Negro precinct.

It is, in many respects, difficult to define a political
structure in the sub-community that is distinct from other
socially significant institutions and associations. By far
the most powerful political group is the Crescent Negro
Council, with its Political Action Committee. Political
scientists have tended to define such Negro organizations in
purely political terms--but to do so is to simplify, reduce,
and obscure their broader social significance. As we have
observed, the Council operates effectively in many institu-
tional areas of Negro social organization. One of its major
functions is political action, and its endeavors in this area
have been increasingly successful. The local chapter of
the N.A.A.C.P. also has a political orientation, but its
membership overlaps that of the Crescent Negro Council
(i.e., the chairman of the Legal Redress Committee of
N.A.A.C.P. is the chairman of the Political Action Com-
mittee, O. G. Sherwood) and its leaders work within the
Council framework. The Council's Political Action Com-
mittee solicits aid from a wide variety of groups in its
political program. I have mentioned the role of the
churches, fraternal groups, and labor unions, which are
channels through which the masses of the sub-community
can be reached. Decisions about which candidates to back,
which issues to favor or oppose, and which Negroes to run
for office, are made by the Council Executive Committee in
conjunction with the Political Action Committee. Policies
made and decisions reached are presented before the total
Council membership (which includes representatives of all
Negro associations and organizations, plus all interested
citizens). Once the Council as a whole has given its
formal approval, precinct committeemen, representatives
of other organizations, and Council leaders communicate
that approval to the sub-community as a whole. Negro
voters are "assisted" in making their choices by the type
of flyer shown in Fig. 2 [sample ballot]. In contrast to the
"assistance" given in the days when Jackson Alder, Sr., and
Dr. Stoddard held control, the citizens of the sub-community
are no longer told for whom they must vote."

* * * *

[The present committee boss, Dr. Allison, has known all
previous leaders since inception. The state NAACP is
now headquartered in Durham. Prof. Joyner at NCCU
must be pleased.]