Chairman Leon W. Russell Gives Opening Mass Meeting Speech at 116th NAACP National Convention

Before I begin, I would like to thank the mayor of this great city and Mecklenburg County for hosting us. Thank you to our hardworking staff, volunteers, members of the board, the Charlotte branch, and North Carolina State Conference, our Blue Ribbon Committee, and our sponsors for bringing this experience to life. And I thank you, our members. You are champions for change that power this great work that we do. 

I also want to recognize Pamela Horowitz, widow of former chairman Julian Bond, who has joined us this evening. It's good to see you. 

Friends, we are gathered here under the theme: the fierce urgency of now. 

God of our weary years. God of our silent tears. Thou who has brought us thus far on our way. 

Thou who has by thy might. Led us into the light. Keep us in the path, we pray. 

This evening, we convene in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, at a time when our nation has just celebrated the 249th anniversary of its founding. 

We convene 125 years after the convening of the Niagara movement on the Canadian side of the Niagara River in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. The Niagara Movement, convened by a multiracial group of citizens of the United States, was convened in response to the Springfield riots, which saw Black citizens in the capital city of the state of Illinois, home to President Lincoln, massacred as a result of racial hate and the perpetuation of a lie. 

The Niagara Movement led to "the call" and the formation 116 years ago in February of 1909 of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

In 1776, our primary membership was officially considered 3/5 of a human. We were destined to be traded as a commodity, treated as property, and denied the rights and privileges of citizenship provided in the very documents that formed the foundation of this nation. 

As we gather here in Charlotte, I am duty-bound to remind you that the fate of Africans in America has always been a major part of the history of the development of this country. 

That history includes the three-fifths compromise, which determined how enslaved people (Black people) would be counted for representation and taxation purposes, an argument that took place in 1787 as the Constitution was being formulated by the founders. That history, Black history, continued in 1807 as the new congress argued the issue of the enslavement of Africans, when international slave trade was banned in the United States by the passage of an act prohibiting the importation of slaves, which took effect on January 1, 1808.  

Black history, also American history, continued to be made when the 31st United States Congress debated the fugitive slave act of 1850, when the legislative body was split between southern slave holding states and northern free-soilers who opposed the continued growth of slavery into the new territories as westward expansion saw the nation extending its boundaries.  Our nation's abhorrent history of the subjugation of human beings was exacerbated when in 1857, Dred Scott dared to stand in a St. Louis, Missouri, courthouse and sue for his freedom and the freedom of his wife, Harriet. It can justifiably be argued that the Supreme Court ruling in their case was the most heinous ruling ever made by a U.S. Supreme Court.  At least, until we arrived at the Robert's court. 

Black history – slavery — was debated by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in their Illinois Senate debates in 1858 and continued in their 1860 presidential debates.  Those who argue that the Civil War was not about slavery need to go back and read the articles of secession adopted by southern states following Lincoln's successful election. Those articles leave no doubt about what the carnage that some call the war between the states was all about.

Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation clearly recognized the enslavement of Africans in the United States as the pivotal issue of the war by offering the southern states an off-ramp if they would renounce secession and cease all hostility against the Union by January 1, 1863. 

And even as Lee surrendered his sword at the Appomattox Courthouse on April 9, 1865, we must acknowledge that the legal enslavement of africans in America did not end in all states and territories of the United States until the 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which had been passed by congress on January 31, 1865, and was ratified on December 6, 1865. 

Even then, I remind you that the history of the United States is replete with stories of Africans in America asserting their constitutional rights, from the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, through the Jim Crow era. I remind you that the United States Supreme Court has often been given the opportunity to help make this a more perfect union including the day in 1892 when Homer Plessy, a Black man, dared sit in a whites only train car in Louisiana, declaring that racial segregation was legal under the doctrine they created called separate but equal to be constitutional and legally justified when they ruled on the case in may of 1896. 

American history is replete with examples of Black people fighting efforts that branded us as second-class citizens and fighting against court cases that ruled that Black people had no rights that a white man needed to respect.  The history of these United States of America included the denial of basic rights, including the right to vote. It includes a history of lynching and other extrajudicial experiences across the nation aimed at keeping Black people in "their place".  

And so, it was 125 years ago after the race riot in Springfield, Illinois, that a group from all racial, cultural, and religious backgrounds joined together in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, to try and figure out how to deal with the question of diversity, equity and inclusion as the nation moved forward. 

"The call," that history, and that movement finally gave birth on February 12, 1909, to the founding in the state of New York of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.  

Our founders stepped up to deal with the fierce urgency of the early twentieth century with respect to the question of civil rights and social justice.  They created the nation's premier civil rights and social justice advocacy organization, the NAACP, this old ship of Zion has been on the battlefield for 116 years.   

The question facing Black America, the NAACP, and our nation as a whole on July 13, 2025, is how will we respond to the fierce urgency of now?     

From the time this Association was incorporated, our mission has been to achieve equity, political rights, and social inclusion by advancing policies and practices that expand human and civil rights, eliminate discrimination, and accelerate the well-being, education, and economic security of Black people and all persons of color. 

The past 116 years have been a constant struggle to ensure that the promises of the Constitution and the benefits of being a citizen of the United States accrue to Americans of African descent and by application, to everyone who becomes a part of this unique experiment. Our primary effort at the beginning was to work within the existing legal paradigm. The effort was to make sure that the government provided equal access to education, public services, and the ability to vote. Post-Civil War reconstruction had demonstrated that given the opportunity to vote, Black people would and could represent their communities in elected office and as effective successful civil servants. The removal of federal troops from the South following the Tilden-Hayes compromise saw the right to vote being taken away and the civil service being purged of Black participation.  

Ironically, free public education was a post-Civil War innovation advocated by newly elected Black legislators. At the founding of the NAACP, the education of Black children was actually illegal in some jurisdictions. When education was provided, there were never equal facilities, quality, or support. Lynching was an extrajudicial form of unequal justice, and housing was legally segregated. Access to capital was non-existent. The criminal justice system never provided due process and never involved justice. 

These were the challenges the association was faced with at its inception. The first 116 years of our organizational history have been fighting the injustice and discrimination I just described. We fought for equal facilities, equal access, and equal opportunity. We fought for Black people to be included in every facet of public life in the nation, and we fought to ensure that Black people benefited from the fruits of our labor.      

In this seventh month of 2025, our nation seems to find itself in an existential crisis. Today, we have people in the highest offices of government who appear to be confused about the constitutional concept of citizenship. 

Those who are paying attention, particularly Black and brown people, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone concerned about the future of this nation, are suffering feelings of anxiety. There is a general feeling of dread about the direction of the nation, and people are questioning the meaning of this 249-year exploration of a citizen-led democracy. In general, people are unsettled about the kind of country we want to be. 

This existential crisis began in earnest on January 20 of this year, however, in truth, it had been festering for more than a year. It was triggered, quite frankly, by one man's thirst for power and revenge. But, more importantly, it was, and is, aided and abetted by racism, bigotry, mean-spiritedness, and downright cruelty. 

In the past 160 days, the nation has moved from a country built and operated on a system of laws debated and determined by active citizen input, legislative debate and judicial scrutiny, to a new untested system of one- man fiats and declarations in the form of hundreds of executive orders that dismantle years of settled law, that unilaterally seek to amend and reinterpret the Constitution, and that upend our understanding of the phrase; in the common good, to mean in, his, personal interest. 

This one-man-induced crisis of national conscience has seen the United States Congress abdicate its role as a policy-creating body, and the Supreme Court has become a parroting lap dog, giving deference to a megalomaniac, intent upon turning the nation from a representative democracy into an authoritarian dictatorship. 

In short, we have become a nation that must decide if we will engage in a struggle to retain and strengthen the republic. Whether we will work to advance civil and human rights, whether we will abdicate our role as active citizens advocating for a more perfect union, or whether we will be a nation of subjects, relegated to kowtowing to an all-powerful leader, who is intent on one-man rule that benefits only the wealthy few? 

Tonight, we at the NAACP recognize the fierce urgency of now. We are aware of the nation's drift into an existential crisis. I came by tonight to say to you that this NAACP has a history of fighting against the tide of hate and bigotry. This NAACP renews its charter as the nation's most vocal advocate for the rights of Black people and of all people to be active participants in, and beneficiaries of, this 249-year-old experiment in representative democracy. We come to Charlotte this week to chart a course that protects the civil rights and social justice gains, hard fought and won over the past 116 years.  

I stand before you this evening with two questions. 

I want to remind you of civil rights and social justice advocate, Fannie Lou Hamer, who famously said, "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." So, are you? 

Will you stand with the NAACP in this struggle? 

Will you be focused on our vision of an inclusive society where equity is the rule and where diversity is recognized, valued, and seen as a resource? Now is the time. 

Will you stand with the NAACP tonight and declare that there will be no kings here, no emperors here, no dictators here? Now is the time. 

Will you stand with the naacp tonight and declare that we will not be a nation defeated by otherism, but that we will be a nation fiercely committed to be one nation, under a higher power, hued together from many nationalities into the true meaning of the latin 'e pluribus unim', from many one, into that nation we aspire to be; now is the time. 

One nation under god (no matter how you worship), indivisible with liberty and justice for all? Now is the time. 

Will you stand with the NAACP tonight? Now is the time. 

Will you stand with us tonight, focused on our mission to create an inclusive society? Now is the time. 

Will you be fierce in your determination to build an inclusive society? Now is the time.  

Will you commit with a sense of urgency, to advancing our vision and our mission? Now is the time. 

Will you stand with us tonight, fiercely committed to urgently march on until victory is won? Now is the time. 

"Will you stand?"