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By Tim Wood
Is there still a need for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?
Have the past successes of this organization made it obsolete?
If you ask Mrs. Johnnie Turner, the answer is a resounding no.
Mrs. Turner is a civil rights pioneer who currently serves as the executive director of the Memphis Branch of the NAACP.
An educator by profession, Mrs. Turner's civil rights activism goes back to her days as a student. She was one of the youngest persons appointed to the board of the Memphis NAACP branch.
When Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington in 1963, Mrs. Turner was there. When the Memphis sanitation workers went on strike, she was at every march.
When the Maury County Branch of the NAACP celebrated its 50th anniversary on Sept. 18, she was there.
As the keynote speaker, she told the several hundred people in attendance about her concern for the young generation of minorities. They have not been educated adequately about the struggles their forebears endured, she said.
"Injustices and inequalities are not as obvious now as they were to my generation," Mrs. Turner said. "The effects of racism are not as obvious."
"We have a generation of young people who do not know the struggles and don't care," she said.
Those struggles include the NAACP's role in the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education lawsuit, which in 1954 began the integration of schools; the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which, among other things, integrated restaurants; the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which integrated neighborhoods; Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which opened up jobs for minorities; and a lawsuit brought by the Memphis NAACP in 1959 which integrated Memphis State, now the University of Memphis.
In reaching out to the young, the NAACP must not only target teen-agers, but young minority professionals, Mrs. Turner said. These professionals who are in the boardrooms of industry and in executive positions must realize that they stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before them.
"Some of our young people think they got everything on their own," she said. "We don't teach our children about the struggle," she said.
"A generation born with their legal rights established doesn't appreciate the NAACP," she said.
If these young professionals don't make the connection between their success and the work of the NAACP, they won't see the need for the organization, she said.
Recent events show the need for the NAACP. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Mrs. Turner described as the nation's greatest beneficiary of affirmative action, voted not to hear the appeal of a case in which the University of Texas threw out affirmative action. Quoting civil rights leader Julian Bond, Mrs. Turner said, "Affirmative action is the just spoils of a righteous war."
"As long as racism continues in this country, the NAACP is needed," she said.
Indeed, all of us stand on the shoulders of others. In Maury County, the local NAACP chapter stands on the shoulders of men and women who stood up for the black community during the race riot of 1946.
The establishment of the local NAACP chapter was a direct result of the 1946 riot. According to information provided by the local branch, the Rev. James Solomon Harris was instrumental in ensuring justice in the hiring, fireing and replacing of teachers in the closing of the black schools in Columbia.
Rev. Harris, along with the Rev. David Williams, James Caldwell, Mrs. Dorothy Johnson, Mrs. Annie R. Harlan and Mrs. Myrtle Birdsong, hired an attorney to try to keep Carver-Smith High School open. The resulting trial put Maury County schools under court order.
The Rev. David Williams served as the branch president, helping black children who were being put out of school without representation and fighting against unfair hiring and firing. Walter Pete Frierson was another local branch president who watched the school board and worked on housing issues. He also fought for the Community Reinvestment Act from banks.
Another leader was Michael Whitaker. The current branch president is the Rev. I.L. Kontar, who has fought for a pay raise in the city sanitation department and to eliminate unfair treatment, unfair housing and address many other problems.
Discrimination hurts everybody, regardless of their race. All of us have benefitted from the work of these pioneers and others, and all of us stand on their shoulders.
First published in the Columbia Daily Herald, Sept. 26, 1999.
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