NAACP won’t invite Trump to convention, breaking a 116-year tradition
The NAACP will not invite President Donald Trump to its national convention this year - the first time in the civil rights organization’s 116-year history that it has excluded a sitting president - citing what it described as his attacks on American democracy.
“The president has signed unconstitutional executive orders to oppress voters and undo federal civil rights protections; he has illegally turned the military on our communities, and he continually undermines every pillar of our democracy to make himself more powerful and to personally benefit from the U.S. government,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said Monday, announcing the group’s decision.
The NAACP convention will be held July 12-16 in Charlotte. This year’s theme is “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” reflecting the political divisions and threats to civil rights.
The move is the latest flash point between the Trump administration and the nation’s largest civil rights organization, which is leading legal battles, including those against efforts to dismantle the Department of Education and changes to voting regulations.
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson, said in an email that “the NAACP isn’t advancing anything but hate and division, while the President is focused on uniting our country, improving our economy, securing our borders, and establishing peace across the globe.”
Johnson said the group has invited sitting presidents since its founding in 1909, irrespective of their political party. “There is a rich history of both Republicans and Democrats attending our convention - from Harry S. Truman to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and beyond,” he said, noting that Vice President JD Vance was also not invited. “This administration does not respect the Constitution or the rule of law,” his statement said.
Most recently, President Joe Biden attended and spoke at the NAACP convention in 2024. The speech, delivered in the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump, sought to turn his condemnation of political violence into a rebuke of Trump.
“Just because we must lower the temperature in our politics … doesn’t mean we should stop telling the truth,” Biden said to Black supporters in an animated speech that criticized Trump on race issues. “Who you are, what you’ve done, what you’ll do - that’s fair game. As Harry S. Truman said, ‘I’ve never given anyone hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.’”
At a time of heightened racial tensions in 2016, Trump declined to address the NAACP convention as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. After being elected president, Trump again declined to speak at the conventions in 2017 and 2018.
In 2019, he refused to address the NAACP convention, citing changes in the date and format of the appearance. Trump said that organizers wanted a question-and-answer session instead of a speech, which he had agreed to deliver. During the convention that year, delegates unanimously passed a vote calling for Trump’s impeachment.
Past Republican presidents have appeared at the conventions, recognizing their role in shaping national conversations on race and civil rights. Speaking at the 2006 convention, President George W. Bush lamented that the Republican Party had let go of its ties to the Black community. “For too long my party wrote off the African American vote, and many African Americans wrote off the Republican Party,” he said to applause.
“That history has prevented us from working together when we agree on great goals. That’s not good for our country … I want to change the relationship,” he added.
And in 1981, President Ronald Reagan rebuked racial bigotry as fundamentally un-American, saying in his convention address: “A few isolated groups in the backwater of American life still hold perverted notions of what America is all about,” adding that “this country, because of what it stands for, will not stand for your conduct.”