Naacp’s Leader Seeks Fresh Start Civil Rights Group Aims To Get Out The Black Vote

NAACP Chairwoman Myrlie B. EversWilliams, seeking a fresh start for the organization after nearly a year of scandal and debt, pledged Sunday the group will get back to the basics of civil rights work.

Evers-Williams was to give the keynote address to the civil rights group’s 86th-annual convention.

“We are anxious to get all the things we might consider negatives behind us,” said EversWilliams, who was elected in February after Chairman William F. Gibson was accused of financial improprieties. “And we will put it to rest in a unified manner.”

The 62-year-old widow of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers has inherited an organization that is $3.8 million in debt, lacks an executive director, has suffered deep staff cuts and bears the scars of months of infighting.

But, she said, “The NAACP is still in existence. It is still a strong organization, still a highly respected organization.”

What strength the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has now lies largely in its grass-roots network of 2,200 branches, college chapters and youth councils - and in the legacy of its past victories for blacks in Congress and the courts.

But now, facing a Republicanled Congress and conservative Supreme Court that are trying to roll back some of those gains, the NAACP will revert to a chief tactic of old: getting out the black vote, Evers-Williams said.

“The power is in the vote, and we do have that power. If we had voted as we should have, we perhaps would not be facing the same problems we’re facing now with the U.S. Supreme Court.”