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The events of the past month have offered signs of great hope for our beloved Association to reinvigorate the national movement for civil rights and social justice as we move towards the fall elections.

They also provided me with a hard-earned reminder of how we must proceed together if we are going to maximize our chances for success.

Three weeks ago, I dedicated my address at our national convention to making the case for One Nation – a massive march on Washington for jobs, justice, and education on 10-2-10 – exactly one month before the national elections. This march will reunite the forces of progress (civil rights, human rights, labor, small business, faith-based, and student organizations), reinvigorate our troops at a critical moment in history, and add volume to our collective demand for massive job creation, good schools and just treatment for all.

In that address, I chose to challenge the national Tea Party leaders to stop explicitly racist extremists from gaining increased influence over our nation’s political discourse through involvement in their rapidly growing movement. The comments were inspired by a resolution presented by members of our Missouri State Conference. They are, as I am, concerned that silence in the face of such extremism only allows the possibilities for hate and the violence it produces to grow. The resolution was passed unanimously by more than 2000 delegates.

Our challenge to Tea Party leaders provoked a series of public responses that were covered widely by the media. First, Tea Party leaders denied our claims were valid. Then they pushed out a false spin that we were calling the Tea Party itself racist. Then, because we were steadfast in the face of their resistance, Tea Party leaders launched an intensive internal conversation about racist elements in their ranks. Thanks to your overwhelming support for the call for civility and responsible stewardship of their movement, they expelled Mark Williams – a Tea Party leader who had a history of making racist remarks – and the faction he had helped lead (which is a good start).

Our call also provoked a wave of threats against volunteer NAACP leaders and staff members across the country. We counted more than 100 in total. In the midst of this wave, a young man was arrested in Florida for making terrorist threats against an NAACP unit, and another man was arrested after a shootout in California. He was dressed in body armor and reportedly on his way to shoot up our allies at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation.

Finally, it provoked a barrage of viral video attacks on the NAACP. Most of them failed to get any traction. One now-notorious video promoted by Andrew Breitbart and Fox News gained widespread media attention on several networks.

I made a critical mistake in assessing the content of that video excerpt, and issued a statement supporting USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack’s decision to “accept the resignation of Mrs. Shirley Sherrod” for statements allegedly made at a local NAACP event and condemning the statements as portrayed.

As President Obama has said, Mrs. Sherrod did not deserve the rush to condemnation.

The mistake is one I deeply regret at a magnitude unparalleled in the 19 years since I took my first job working in the civil and human rights movement. I hurt Mrs. Sherrod and hurt her deeply, and I am very sorry.

I am also thankful that she has graciously accepted my apology, and that she has stated publicly that she continues to believe in the NAACP and the urgent need for our work.

We issued the original statement in the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday, July 20, attempting to head off a brewing media firestorm before the morning news shows.

Within hours of issuing that statement, we knew something was wrong.

By 9:00 a.m., that same day, we had removed the statement from our website and announced publicly that we were withdrawing it. We had also assembled a multi-departmental team to investigate the facts surrounding the incident.

By 11:00 a.m., we had contacted Mrs. Sherrod to inform her we were actively reassessing our statement.

By 4:00 p.m., we had tracked down the full video, and assembled staff and a national commentator on CNN to listen to the entire speech.

By 5:00 p.m., I was on the phone apologizing to Mrs. Sherrod and reviewing with her the statement we would issue moments later stating our error and urging the Administration to reinstate her.

By 7:00 p.m., that evening, we succeeded in uploading the full video of her remarks on our website for the world to see and to unequivocally set the record straight.

That evening I went on CNN and MSNBC to amplify our new statement.

I am grateful for how our national staff came together to address the error.

The beautiful and inspiring speech Mrs. Sherrod gave to our Coffee County, Georgia, Branch has now been viewed more than 500,000 times since being posted at NAACP.org. Most notably, it was viewed by senior officials at the USDA and the White House as they deliberated and decided to make their apologies to Mrs. Sherrod and invite her to rejoin the senior ranks of the USDA.

As she graciously accepted my apology, Mrs. Sherrod asked that the NAACP redouble our efforts on Capitol Hill to ensure Black farmers receive the settlement they won after filing a lawsuit documenting the USDA’s entrenched patterns of racial discrimination. I agreed readily. It is an issue in which our Washington Bureau Director Hilary Shelton and I have both been personally engaged.

A mistake of this sort will not happen again. In the future, no matter what the context, before making such a decision, there will be much more intensive investments in research and consultation on the front end.

The staff is currently in the process of debriefing and reviewing protocols to institutionalize this commitment. America counts on the NAACP to get it right the first time, and you should be able to count on your national office to be the standard bearer for our great Association.

In the meantime, what will not change is our commitment to confronting racism wherever it flourishes, and building powerful alliances to combat its most urgent structural manifestations.

We applaud Mrs. Sherrod’s decision to sue Mr. Breitbart and will back her up on that suit. We will complement that effort and build upon the work we began with our nationwide protests against Fox News’ parent company, NewsCorp, by advocating even more aggressively for them to reverse their pattern of exploiting and inflaming national racial and social tensions. (It should come as no surprise that the aforementioned gunman claims to be a loyal listener to Glenn Beck, or that the ACLU and the Tides Foundation are frequent targets of his on-air animus.)

Breitbart’s attack on Mrs. Sherrod, on us and on the movement was just malicious. He said he attacked Mrs. Sherrod to destroy the NAACP. Let me say again that I made a grave mistake. What Breitbart did was calculated and deliberate, designed to divide and destroy.

But if those who seek to divide us think what was done in trying to damage a mighty and heroic black woman, damage the NAACP, and damage the movement will succeed, then they do not know that we live by a higher order.

What was meant for evil, God will turn to good. We will be made stronger, not weaker.

That’s why we will stand with Shirley Sherrod, a hero to us all, in her lawsuit.

That’s why we will continue on, release our report on racism in the Tea Party, and push all their factions to adhere to modern standards for inclusiveness and civility.

That’s why we will mobilize and march on Washington on 10.2.10, and continue to build the movement to put schools before wars, and fighting massive joblessness for our neighbors above maintaining massive tax breaks for the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent.

We must be as aggressive as parents fighting for their children’s lives, or as individuals fighting for their own lives, because we are.

We must be as inclusive as our long-standing vision for the 21st Century, because it is here.

And we must be as vigilant in the fight against hate-based politics and racist threats and violence as our forebears, because as the NAACP we are committed to ensuring America moves ever forward, never backward.

As Mrs. Sherrod said in her now famous speech, “If we are going to rebuild our communities, if we are going to get with all of the problems we have in our communities, it will take all of us working together to solve them.”

Thank you to everyone who has contacted me with advice, counsel, and encouragement in recent weeks. I have benefitted from it, and I am as committed to seizing this personal opportunity for growth as I am to maximizing our collective opportunity to lead America in a better direction.

It is an honor to serve as your national president.

I look forward to seeing you on 10-2-10 as we together take the fight to our foes, make our demands on Congress clear before the elections, and remind America that we and our allies are the present and growing majority and will not yield the battlefield willingly.

Yours in the struggle,

Benjamin Todd Jealous
President and CEO
NAACP

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(Washington, DC) – During the Senate confirmation hearings of Elena Kagan to be Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, several Senators have disparaged Justice Thurgood Marshall, his judicial philosophy, and his connection to Elena Kagan, who once clerked for Justice Marshall. In response to these attacks, NAACP LDF President and Director-Counsel John Payton issues the following statement:

“Thurgood Marshall changed our country dramatically for the better. Astonishingly, Elena Kagan is being attacked by certain members of the Senate Judiciary Committee because she says her mentor was Thurgood Marshall. She could not have had a better mentor.

Here is what is undisputed: In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was a leader of those forces whose faith in the Constitution and the American Dream dismantled the perverse empire of Jim Crow – with its separate and unequal schools and colleges, its rigidly segregated neighborhoods, and its profoundly unequal opportunity in every sector of American life. As the founder of LDF, Thurgood Marshall helped America understand what democracy really means; and he continued to expound that exalted vision as a Justice of the Supreme Court.

It is a disservice to the Senate and to the nation to have some, for the sake of hollow posturing, distort Thurgood Marshall’s beliefs and his extraordinary contribution to our understanding of justice and equality. Simply put, Thurgood Marshall helped make our union more perfect, and that legacy illuminates the highest possibilities for all Americans yesterday, today and tomorrow.”

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(New York, NY) – On Monday the 17th, the United States Supreme Court declared that children convicted of non-homicide offenses cannot be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Court concluded that because adolescents are, by nature, less culpable than adults and because life without parole is an extreme sentence which is rarely imposed on teenagers, it is cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a child who has not killed to life without possibility of parole. The Court explained that “[a] life without parole sentence improperly denies the juvenile offender a chance to demonstrate growth and maturity. Incapacitation cannot override all other considerations, lest the Eighth Amendment’s rule against disproportionate sentences be a nullity.”

“Today the Supreme Court recognized that children convicted of non-homicide crimes have the potential to become contributing members of society and that certain life sentences run afoul of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment,” said John Payton, LDF’s President and Director-Counsel.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), along with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice (CHHIRJ) filed a friend of the court brief challenging the constitutionality of juvenile life without parole sentences. In declaring these sentences unconstitutional, Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority of the Court, noted that the NAACP LDF’s brief properly identified the “special difficulties encountered by counsel in juvenile representation” and that “the features that distinguish juveniles from adults put them at a significant disadvantage in criminal proceedings. Specifically, juveniles mistrust adults and have limited understandings of the criminal justice system and the roles of the institutional actors within it. They are less likely than adults to work effectively with their lawyers to aid in their defense.” LDF’s brief also noted the stark racial disparities in juvenile life without parole sentencing — African-Americans constitute 60% of the youth serving such sentences.

The United States is the only country in the world that permits adolescents to be sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. Currently there are more than 2500 teenagers serving life without parole sentences for crimes they committed under the age of 18. One-hundred-and-twenty-nine of those young people were convicted of crimes that did not result in death.

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The NAACP in coalition with other civil rights groups filed a class action lawsuit today challenging Arizona’s new law requiring police to demand “papers” from people they stop who they suspect are not authorized to be in the U.S. If an individual is caught without papers they can be arrested and jailed. The extreme law, the coalition charged, invites the racial profiling of people of color, violates the First Amendment and interferes with federal law.

“We are joining this lawsuit because the Arizona law is out of step with American values of fairness and equality. It encourages racial profiling and is unconstitutional. African-Americans know all too well the insidious effects of racial profiling,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP. “The government should be preventing police from investigating and detaining people based on color and accent, not mandating it. Laws that encourage discrimination have no place in this country anywhere for anyone.”

“Subjecting human beings to discrimination and punishment based upon race and accent is morally offensive, unconstitutional and un-American, said Wilbert Nelson, the president of the NAACP Arizona state conference “We will fight vigorously to make sure this poisonous law never takes effect. It is part of a menacing return to racial discrimination and the beginning of a slippery slope. Right after this hate law was passed, a statute banning the ethnic studies in our school was passed. “

The lawsuit charges that the Arizona law unlawfully interferes with federal power and authority over immigration matters in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution; invites racial profiling against people of color by law enforcement in violation of the equal protection guarantee and prohibition on unreasonable seizures under the Fourteenthand Fourth Amendments; and infringes on the free speech rights of day laborers in violation of the First Amendment. A number of other states are considering similar laws.

Several prominent law enforcement groups, including the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, oppose the law because it diverts limited resources from law enforcement’s primary responsibility of providing protection and promoting public safety in the community and undermines trust and cooperation between local police and immigrant communities.

“As a former police officer, many of us in law enforcement want to ensure that the resources of the police are put into fighting serious crime and not turn them into federal immigration agents,” said Reverend Oscar Tillman, president of the Maricopa County Branch (Phoenix, Arizona). “It can jeopardize security when victims or witnesses to crime are afraid to talk to police because they might be targeted by this law.”

The coalition filing the lawsuit includes the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union, , MALDEF, National Immigration Law Center (NILC), ACLU of Arizona, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) – a member of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice.

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May 15, 2010 Hollywood, Florida—The NAACP, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, unanimously endorsed Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, today at their quarterly board meeting.

The organization reviewed Kagan’s available record on civil rights including her recent authorization for the Department of Justice and the Department of Civil Rights to file an amicus brief supporting the constitutionality of the University of Texas’ affirmative action program in Fisher v. University of Texas and her brief in support of African American firefighters who challenged a hiring test used by the City of Chicago under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Lewis v. City of Chicago).

“After a careful and thorough review of Elena Kagan’s record, we have unanimously voted to endorse her nomination,” stated President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. “Elena Kagan has demonstrated a commitment to civil rights and equal justice under the law throughout her career. Kagan drew her inspiration from NAACP former counsel and Supreme court Justice Thurgood Marshall who she considers a hero and mentor. During her tenure at the White House, Kagan worked on issues such as strengthening hate crimes legislation and civil rights enforcement. As a law school Dean, she worked to ensure a diverse student body and faculty. And as Solicitor General, Kagan has vigorously defended the nation’s equal opportunity and civil rights laws. We look forward to actively supporting her nomination,” Jealous said.

“Elena Kagan has a track record of bringing people together. She is skilled at forging legal consensus on contentious issues,” stated NAACP Chairman Roslyn Brock. “Civil rights is a bipartisan issue. It is central to the core of our American values. We believe Elena Kagan has the ability to use her fine legal mind, her commitment to diversity and her ability to build bridges to effectively advocate in the Court for the civil rights and democracy enshrined in our constitution.”

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The NAACP supports Amnesty International’s (AIUSA) report on Reggie Clemons “Death by Prosecutorial Misconduct and a ‘Stacked Jury.” Along with AIUSA, the Missouri ACLU the Missouri State Conference NAACP stands with the Justice for Reggie Committee to expose the miscarriage of justice that has kept Reggie Clemons on death row for 20 years.

Reggie was beaten by the police and coerced into making a false statement; and was denied an attorney. This statement was compelled by torture that should have been excluded. At Reggie’s arraignment, Judge Michael David noted that Reggie had suffered physical injury while in custody and sent him to a hospital Emergency Room.

The civil rights question is whether proceedings in which a coerced statement was used, and which resulted in a sentence of death for Reggie Clemons denied him the due process of law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. In February 2009 the NAACP National Board of Directors voted to support efforts to stop the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, consistent with NAACP resolutions in 2004, 2001 and 1975. At the NAACP Centennial Convention in New York, July 2009 the Missouri State Conference delegation lead by Mr. Harold Crumpton, Ms. Anita Russell and Missouri State Conference President Mary Ratliff introduced an Emergency Resolution that was passed for a Clemency Campaign to save the life of Reggie Clemons. NAACP Units across the US are collecting signatures on petitions to prevent the execution of an innocent man.

The NAACP also supports legislative efforts to end the death penalty in Missouri:

–House Bill 1683 to create a moratorium was introduced by Rep. Bill Deeken. –Senate Bill SB 591 (Sen. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis) would repeal the death penalty. –House Bill HB 1413 (Rep. Mike McGhee, R-Odessa) would compel counties to cover the cost of prosecuting death-penalty cases and create greater overview of which homicide cases could qualify for seeking a death-sentence. –House Bill HB 1415 (Rep. Mike McGhee, R-Odessa) would open the Parole board clemency hearing to the person scheduled to be executed and his/her attorneys and require the Board’s findings be made public. –House Bill 1550 (Rep. Don Calloway, D-St. Louis) would strive to prevent race from playing any role in pursing death sentencing.

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Rep. Anthony Brown of Eudora Kansas, tried unsuccessfully to amend the House’s Appropriations bill to mimic the recently passed Arizona State Immigration bill.

When introducing the amendment, Representative Brown made clear that, “This is modeled after immigration law that passed out of the Arizona Legislature.” Rep. Brown went on to say that the purpose of his amendment was to deny benefits “to those folks who can’t prove their status.”

The Amendment was killed procedurally when Democrats questioned if the proposed amendment was germane to the appropriations bill he sought to amend. In a relatively short time, the rules committee declared the proposed amendment was not germane, referring to it “more policy than appropriations.”

It is not surprising that members of the Kansas Legislature would seek to pass legislation similar to the Arizona Bill considering one of the co-authors of the Arizona Bill was Kris Kobach, candidate for Kansas Secretary of State. But we should not rest… given the impending political shift in Topeka, we can be assured that this bill will come back next session; likely as a stand-alone piece of legislation. Along with it will come the tired-old myths of welfare and voter fraud, calls for voter id’s, and the magnification of ANY criminal act committed by a Hispanic, all serving to fuel a nascent anti-immigrant hysteria. (If that sounds at all hyperbolic, just pan through the Wichita Eagle’s blog section anytime there’s a story that even mentions a Hispanic person…)

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(WASHINGTON, DC) – The NAACP issued the following statement regarding SB1070; a new law in Arizona that gives local law enforcement the right to arrest anyone they suspect is in the country illegally. Governor Jan Brewer signed SB1070 into Arizona law on Friday, April 23rd.

“The NAACP is outraged that in 2010, a sitting Governor would sign a law that empowers local law enforcement to legally use racial profiling to target entire communities. It is a violation of the respect for human rights that is the moral standard of our nation and it threatens the safety of us all as both immigrants and citizens will be fearful of reporting crimes to police. The law unwisely redirects the role of the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Department to local police officers diverting local resources from fighting crime to investigating undocumented people who might be in this country,” stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. “Governor Brewer’s signature on SB1070 is another attempt to roll the clock back on civil rights protections in this country.”

“The passage of SB1070 is an embarrassment to the equal protection clause in the U.S. Constitution, and if we are not careful will leave a permanent stain on the United State’s reputation throughout the world. As an association that has fought for more than 100 years to ensure that basic rights and freedoms would be equally extended to all, it is disheartening to see the State of Arizona enact a law that tramples on the civil rights of Hispanic persons, and one that cannot be enforced without resorting to racial and ethnic profiling. We intend to use the full weight of our 2200 branches and units to ensure that this law is repealed and does not happen in other states across this nation,” stated NAACP Chairman Roslyn M. Brock. “As a nation we must enact comprehensive immigration reform so people who are in this country without documentation will have a path to citizenship, and we look forward to working toward that goal with the President and Congress in the coming months.”

The proposed law requires state, county, and municipal employees to ascertain the immigration status of a person if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is unlawfully present in the U.S. It also subjects local governments and their personnel to lawsuits by any citizen who feels that the new law is not being enforced sufficiently. The law would impose a $500 fine, among other costs, and a misdemeanor charge leading to possible deportation for individuals who could not show proof of legal presence.

“The NAACP is deeply disappointed that Governor Brewer signed SB1070 into law. This new law effectively legalizes the incendiary practice of racial profiling and will adversely affect communities of color across Arizona. Moreover, it sets a dangerous precedent for other states to follow suit and pass similar discriminatory measures,” stated NAACP Washington Bureau Director and Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy Hilary O. Shelton. “We look forward to working with other national civil rights groups, the U.S. Congress and President Obama to achieve comprehensive immigration reform so that racially and ethnically discriminatory laws like SB1070 are rendered irrelevant and useless.”

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The Issue: At every stage of the criminal justice process serious problems undermine basic tenets of fairness and equity, as well as the public’s expectations for safety. Perhaps the most glaring problem inherent in today’s system is the number of racial and ethnic minorities who are disproportionately treated more harshly and more often by our Nation’s criminal justice system. At every stage of the criminal justice process – from initial contact to sentencing to the challenges facing those reentering the community after incarceration – racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the number of people stopped, arrested, tried, convicted and incarcerated.

While people may argue about the reasons behind it, few would disagree that extensive racial and ethnic disparities exist today in the American criminal justice system. These disparities are particularly true for African American men and boys, who are grossly overrepresented at every stage of the judicial process. Initial contacts with police officers are often driven by racial profiling and other racially tainted practices, and the disparities exist through the sentencing phase: African Americans routinely receive more jail time and harsher punishments. Although African Americans make up just over 12% of the national population, 42% of Americans currently on death row are African American. Nearly a million African Americans today are incarcerated in prisons and in jails, and unless there is a change, a black male born today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime. Furthermore, African American women have the highest rate of incarceration among women in our nation, a rate that is four times higher than that of White women.

This is not just a problem among African Americans or racial and ethnic minorities. Our nation has 5 percent of the world’s population. We have 25 percent of the world’s known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States that is five times the incarceration rate in the rest of the world. The bottom line is that under our current criminal justice system too many people are being incarcerated and otherwise caught up in the criminal justice system and we still have too many Americans who do not feel safe in the homes or their communities. Furthermore, because of the disparities that result from our current system, entire communities within our country do not have confidence in the criminal justice system.

The National Criminal Justice Act has been introduced in the Senate (S.714) and House (H.R. 5143) to create a national commission with an 18-month timeline to examine and review the myriad of problems that exist in our current criminal justice system. In doing so, the Commission would also be charged with looking at how we have arrived at this convoluted mess, how many of our problems are interrelated and often feed off of one another, and how we can correct a system that is badly in need of a new course. On January 21, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved of S. 714 by a strong bipartisan margin: the legislation is now awaiting action by the full Senate.

THE NAACP STRONGLY SUPPORTS THE NATIONAL CRIMINAL JUSTICE ACT, S. 714 / H.R. 5143

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Born 2 years before women were granted the right to vote, Dr. Dorothy Height was an eyewitness to and a key participant in nearly a century of change. An advisor to Presidents, a champion of Womens equality, and a towering figure in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Height was, as some have described her, the Godmother of the Movement.

She was a Past President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, a Past President of the National Council for Negro Women, a consultant on African affairs to the Secretary of State, the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped, and the President’s Committee on the Status of Women. She was also the founder of the National Black Family Reunion, an Executive Committee member of the Leadership Council on Civil Rights, an NAACP Spingarn Award Winner, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dr. Height dedicated her life to ensuring that our generation and our children would have better lives. She stood on every battlefield, and helped us mark every milestone…

Dr. Height, for all that you gave and sacrificed on our behalf, for all that you’ve accomplished and for all you wished and worked towards, we are eternally grateful.  We love you, we thank you, and we cherish your memory. On this day Dr. Height, we mourn your passing, and celebrate your home-going…

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