Broome/Tioga NAACP Statement of Organization, Need and Purpose

A new branch of the Broome/Tioga NAACP was organized in the fall of 1992 after about ten years of relative inactivity by a branch
formation active in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. During the intervening period however, several spontaneous civil rights protests arose in angry
response to such alarming incidents as the still controversial jail death of mother and worker, Shirley Harris. 

The 1990’s branch re-organization was in response to growing concerns about particularly deteriorating economic, social, educational and
political for Broome and Tioga County African-Americans. It was spurred by the determined organizing activities of Keith Waldron and
Michael Brown. Mr. Waldron, an African-American commercial building purchaser in Hancock, New York, who is disabled, lost his
investment as the victim of an apparently racially motivated arson. Mr. Brown, an African-American Binghamton resident, had been
injured by a motorist while riding a bicycle to work. 

Over several months meetings were held, officers' elected, and action commit-tees formed. Mr. Waldron became the newly organized
branch’s first president.

In March 1993, the branch, till then a committee, received notification from the civil rights organization's national office of the approval of
its charter. Joe Madison, an award winning DC talk radio personality, civil rights and labor activist and prominent NAACP leader was the
main speaker at the Broome/Tioga NAACP "Freedom Fund Dinner" in 1994, attended by over 100 people. 

Purposes and Aims

The purposes and aims of the NAACP, or National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, are to improve the political,
educational, social and economic status of minority groups, to eliminate racial prejudice, to keep the public aware of the adverse effects of
racial discrimination, and to take lawful action to secure its elimination. The NAACP "doctrine" is simply and well stated by Dr. WEB
Dubois, a founder of the NAACP, in its "Crisis" magazine, September 1931. Dr. Dubois then said, "The NAACP years ago laid down a clear
and distinct program. Its object was to make 12 million Americans:

Physically free from peonage,

Mentally free from ignorance,

Politically free from disenfranchisement,

Socially free from insult."

"Days of Infamy," Not New to Historic NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was created in 1909, in reaction to a lynching in Springfield,
Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln. The new group’s object was to seek "equal rights and opportunities for all." The NAACP’s Crisis
Magazine, became a journal of considerable intellectual reputation. 

By 1940, there had been almost 3,500 lynchings in the country, mostly in the small towns and rural areas of the South where today, fifty-six
years later, we see Black churches burned and imprisoned Black youth murdered by their jailers. Between V-J Day , the end of the war
against Japan, and June 1947, less than two years later, there were twenty-six lynchings of blacks. Head-quartered in the beginning in New
York City, by 1940, the NAACP had more than 350 branches and 50,000 members. By 1947 its membership was 369,000. Though association
branches existed across the country, most members were in the South, where the overwhelming number of Black Americans then lived.
The black church was a vital ally, in the South most meetings were held in churches. For most of this century, the NAACP was the only
civil rights organization that made a consistent difference. Nationwide membership is over half a million.

A Time to Organize 

The Broome-Tioga NAACP has seen a sharp increase in membership in a short period of time. Perhaps this is due to the community's
awareness of the need of organizations such as this to address the growing problems of racism and discrimination through out this
community and through out the entire country. Over the few years since its re-formation in 1992, the fledgling Broome\Tioga branch has
had to take on many complaints of racial discrimination harassment and other forms of abuse. 

Numerous complaints of police harassment and abuse in Binghamton, Johnson City, Endicott, Vestal, and other Broome and Tioga county
jurisdictions have been made to the Branch, as have many complaints of receipt of hate literature and discrimination in
employ-employment, education, consumer affairs, social services, housing and criminal justice requiring investigation and advocacy. 

The notorious actions of off-duty police involving drunken rioting and racial intimidation and injury on Main Street, Binghamton, in
February of 1994, was widely publicized through resolute branch action and taken to the US Department of Justice after a notorious
white-wash by the Broome County District Attorney. A branch Legal Redress committee has recently reconstituted and is developing
procedures for monitoring and advocating for civil rights within the criminal justice system. The purpose of this committee is to
investigate all cases reported to it and to supervise all litigation in which the Branch is interested. The committee continuously attempts to
respond to the numerous complaints against Law Enforcement Agencies by minorities.

Branch and committee meetings have been held on many of these issues with the Binghamton Mayor Bucci, the Binghamton Chief of
Police, Johnson City Mayor Lewis and the Johnson City Chief of Police, Endicott Mayor Archer, former Social Services Commissioner Hoke
and now Commissioner, former Protective Services Director Hauser, the Public Defenders office, various school district superintendents
and other school officials and board members. 

Several committee projects have been undertaken, most notably that of the Labor-Industry Committee in surveying employment practices
in county, town and social agency employment hiring and promotion practices. Completed portions, proving gross discrimination in
hiring and promotion equity were extensively publicized in the Labor-Community Reporter and referred to editorially in the Binghamton
Press and Sun-Bulletin. The purpose of this committee is to work to eliminate discriminatory employment practices in industry and
government, wage differentials based on race, unequal opportunities for training and promotion and unfair dismissals. This committee is
following up on several incidents at local employers. The nature of the complaints vary from verbal racial harassment and unequal
opportunities for promotion to unfair dismissals. 

The Education Committee has met with school superintendents individually and collectively, demanding the enforcement of clear racial
discrimination harassment policies in all county schools. Most recently the Johnson City School district was presented with a Branch
demand for the adoption of the model racial harassment policy seen in this section.

The racially hostile social environment of New York State prisons built in outlying areas away from urban centers, negatively impacts on
the lives of tens of thousands of African-American inmates and their families, often victims of a racially inequitable legal system.
Meanwhile, millions of tax dollars is transferred to those localities for those purposes devoid of any significant minority economic
participation. For these compelling social and economic reasons a Broome/Tioga Branch Resolution on prison construction, vendor
contracts, and corrections hiring at all levels, was unanimously approved and disseminated to all other branches and to regional and
national offices of the NAACP. The Resolution called for all prison hiring, vending and contracting in each prison throughout the state to
be proportionally related to the percent of minority inmates incarcerated in the prison system.