Race and Remembrance: A Memoir

Appendix D: A Commitment to the NAACP

2 3 7 A P P E N D I X D A Commitment to the NAACP Remarks by Arthur L. Johnson upon his installation as president of the Detroit branch NAACP at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church on January 23, 1987. I am honored to have been elected to serve as president of the Detroit branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and I am grateful for the trust of my fellow NAACP members and friends who have made possible this opportunity. I promise that I shall do everything within my power, using the best of my heart, mind, and physical energy to unite and mobilize the forces of this community behind the NAACP, to toughen the will and muscle of the organization, and to make real gains in removing from the path of black people, especially black children, the killing effect of racial oppression. In this task, I shall call on everyone to participate: white and black, young and old, rich and poor, union member and businessman, the handicapped and able-bodied, the educated and those who cannot read. I shall ask all to give what they can of their means and time. And yes, I shall seek the return of the buppies who have escaped to nowhere. Our mission is to free ourselves and our country. Racism is still rampant and a virulent force in our national life. Its open manifestations, as seen in recent incidents of racial violence in the North and South, provide us with clear evidence of the problem before us. I come, then, to this responsibility with the belief that we can and must do a great deal more to hasten the realization of our goals. To this end, I have already moved, with the support of our board, to establish six task forces in the following areas: 1.Jobs and economic development 2.Education and health issues 3.Member participation and activities 2 3 8 | A P P E N D I X D 4.Youth and young adult involvement 5.Fiscal and membership development 6.Public communications and image These task forces will take a fresh examination of where we are, with the aims of determining the most critical problems and issues confronting the NAACP and the black community. They will then seek to outline a set of realistic goals, which we shall work to achieve. We shall not try to do everything, but we shall do what we must to change the conditions in our community. And, for those who may yet ask the question, Is the civil rights movement alive? we shall answer as we have through the years—we shall go to court, we shall protest, we shall demonstrate, and we shall be heard. We know that our work is cut out for us. The black community is heavily burdened by a generalized economic weakness and poverty conditions, which afflict more than half of our men, women, and children. In such conditions it is impossible for blacks to find selfrealization in the best terms, to educate their children, provide adequate health care for their families, and to support development of their neighborhoods. In a very tragic sense, we have here, as Kenneth Clark has described it, the experience of a mugged community where teenage pregnancy, high infant mortality, a high crime rate, and black-on-black violence are the most painful signs of social disorder and dysfunction. Our forebears did not willingly accept racial oppression, and it is time for us to undo it for ourselves, our children, and black generations to come. Our struggle as African Americans has become the struggle of our city. I welcome the responsibility; I believe that we have in the survival of the city a fair test of our civilization. Therefore, those who profess to help the black cause and who seek to stand above white racism must address the needs of the city, or they do little of any consequence to achieve change and reconstruction in race relations. I have noted in other places that the weak state of our city’s economic health, the calculated mistreatment of its image, and the A Commitment to the NAACP | 2 3 9 alarming scale of economic disinvestment in Detroit are in large part the result of conscious and unconscious racism. Whether we wish to recognize the fact or not, these conditions are the symbols of...