Published: October 19, 2009 12:31 am      

NIAGARA FALLS: A centennial celebration for the NAACP

Local civil rights organization celebrates centennial, looks to past as it prepares for future

Falls NAACP head Bill Bradberry beamed Sunday afternoon and said, “The clouds have parted and the sun has come out.”

Then with 100 white balloons rising into the sky, members and supporters of the local chapter of the NAACP celebrated the organization’s centennial. Pointing proudly to meetings in the Falls prior to the national organization’s creation in New York City in 1909, Bradberry said there are more good days ahead.

“Obviously, we’ve made a lot of progress (in fighting discrimination),” he said. “We are proud of the fact the seeds were planted here by the Niagara Movement meeting four years earlier.”

Celebrations of the NAACP’s 100th anniversary have been held across the country and folks in the Falls packed the New Hope Baptist Church on Buffalo Avenue raising their voices in song and prayerful reflection on the organizations accomplishments.

“Let us give praise we’ve come this far,” Bradberry said, “and let us reaffirm ourselves to the challenges ahead.”

In a rousing welcoming to the celebration, long-time NAACP member and Niagara County Legislator Renae Kimble said it was the “greatest civil rights advocacy group the world had ever known.”

“People have asked, ‘Is the NAACP relevant?’,” Kimble said. “It is more relevant today than ever before. As long as there is employment discrimination, as long as there is police brutality, as long as there is housing discrimination, and as long as a justice of the peace will not marry an interracial couple, it is relevant. This is a call to action. We will not rest on our past laurels.”

Among those in attendance, Buffalo NAACP President Frank Messiah said the organization was formed in an effort to change laws in America that institutionalized discrimination against people by providing for “separate, but not very equal” treatment. Some landmark lawsuits, brought by the national NAACP, began to change those laws.

“It’s that slow progress that keeps leading us forward,” Messiah said. “And everyone, the elderly, the disabled, have benefited from these changes.”

Falls School Board member Don King said he has been a member of the local NAACP chapter since the 1960s.

“I probably joined for the same reasons I ran for the school board, to integrate the schools,” King said. “I was also a member of the National Conference of Christians and Jews and the mission was the same, to eliminate bigotry.”

Going forward, Bradberry said there is still a lot of work for the local NAACP chapters to do.

“There are challenges, Buffalo and Niagara Falls are among the poorest cities in the country. We still have educational issues. We still have health care issues,” he said. “There is a lot to do and we are going to do it. There’s a long way to go, but no, it should not take us another 100 years.”