Naacp Leader Urges Group To Replace Apathy With Action

NAACP Chairman Myrlie Evers-Williams exhorted more than 3,000 members Sunday night to shake off the yoke of apathy and help return the organization to social and political prominence.

In a keynote speech that bore little resemblance to prepared remarks Evers-Williams was scheduled to make, the NAACP leader compared apathy to “a big fat rat” and called on the membership to become more active on issues of social, economic and political inequity.

“We must send a clear message to all Americans that we are prepared to be that spring that will crack the neck of prejudice and racism in America,” Evers-Williams said.

In was not immediately clear why she departed substantially from a prepared text distributed to reporters just minutes before she started to speak at the start of a five-day convention.

In the prepared speech, Evers-Williams issued a strong defense of school integration.

Evers-Williams, widow of slain civil rights icon Medgar Evers, has been involved in a row generated last month when a front-page story in The New York Times said the NAACP would formally debate whether to abandon its age-old support for school integration.

She lambasted the article as “creative writing” at a news conference Saturday.

President Clinton will speak to the group Thursday.