NAACP Baltimore Branch Unity Banquet

I would like to thank my fellow members of the NAACP for inviting me to speak with you tonight. It’s privilege to speak to the NAACP’s flagship Branch, in Baltimore, the headquarters city.

It’s been said many times before, but this organization is truly our nation’s conscience. The NAACP has the compassion to reach out to sinners on death row, and the power to face down television networks when they fail to reflect our country’s great diversity in their programming.

In all its work, the NAACP calls upon the people of our city, and our country, to do what is right, not what is expedient. To take responsibility for leading change, rather than standing by – either as a victim or a passive observer.

The theme of this event, “Seize the Moment: Race to Vote,” captures this spirit in challenging citizens to exercise their right to vote. Only a month from the first national election of this new century, this call to action is critical. We must seize the opportunity to vote for the candidate who not only best protects our interests, but whom we trust to do the right thing.

I know that no one here needs a history lesson. But I would like to share what I try to keep in mind when I enter the voting booth, to help emphasize the importance of what we are called upon to do this November.

I think about the four girls – Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley – who were killed at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, because of hatred and bigotry. Four little girls died because ignorant racists wanted to keep their parents from exercising their rights as citizens, as well as deny those girls the freedom to reach their potential.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, born from the backlash against this heinous act, sought to enforce the constitutional right to vote, and to prevent discrimination in public places and education.

But that law wasn’t enough.

So, in 1965, now-Congressman John Lewis led a silent march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, demanding voting rights for all American citizens. In an event recalled as Bloody Sunday, Congressman Lewis and many of his fellow marchers were beaten into unconsciousness by a violent mob of State Troopers and Sheriff’s Deputies, who were supposed to be there to uphold the law.

Outrage from this state-sanctioned riot led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Finally, over the next few years, a majority of African Americans were able to exercise their right to vote. Every American has benefited as reality in our nation began to better reflect the principals stated so eloquently by our founders, who fought a bloody war against the British to guarantee the rights they held sacred.

In the face of what prior generations have endured to guarantee our vote, it seems unconscionable not to exercise that right. With so much work remaining to achieve justice, the very least we should do to honor the accomplishments of America’s great civil rights leaders is go to the polls once or twice a year to lock in their legacy through the political process.

However, I believe voting is the least, not the most we should do to work for justice in our city. By your presence here tonight, and your membership in this great organization, I know you agree that we must do more.

The past 15 years have seen our nation’s African American leaders memorialize the great accomplishments of the civil rights movement by achieving political power. Now, during the next 15 years, all citizens, regardless of race, must work together to build on this legacy by bringing economic empowerment to every city, every neighborhood, and every family.

Political power without economic empowerment is a hollow victory. In a city where two-thirds of our residents are African American, if we do not foster a thriving community of African American entrepreneurs and business leaders, we will be forced to try to build an unsustainable economy, with a shrinking tax base, based on government and grants.

Some people might have thought that because Baltimore had a new, white Mayor, and because a federal judge struck down our minority contracting law, that we might retreat on empowering business in our city. That assumption would be dead wrong. Minority – or in our city, majority – business empowerment is critical to Baltimore’s future.

We recently hired a successful young entrepreneur, Brian Morris, as the city’s first Director of Minority Business Development. We are reforming our procurement system to get rid of red tape that prevents small businesses from working with city government. And I issued my first, and so far only, Executive Order, informing all agency heads that it is now our city’s policy to award 35 percent of contracts to minority and women-owned businesses.

These government-sponsored initiatives can and will help. But what will really make a difference is if the leaders of our business community make it their business to support existing companies owned by African American entrepreneurs, and to recruit new businesses by letting national firms know that Baltimore wants their business. I need your help, as leaders in our community, to draw upon your contacts, your creativity and your can-do attitude to make it happen.

Like economic growth, a great deal of our city’s hopes and dreams depend upon your active leadership. Government can do something, but not everything.

Our schools can improve from within, but without the active support of parents, businesses and the community, they will not enable our children to achieve their full potential.

Our streets can be safer through the hard work of the men and women of our Police Department, but neighborhoods will not be freed from the occupation of violent drug dealers until we come together as a city to provide treatment for addicts, intervene with guidance for troubled youth, and demand severe consequences for the violent few who render senior citizens and children prisoners in their own homes.

It is people, not process that will change our city.

Remember to vote in November, but seize the moment in other ways. You are members of the NAACP, the biggest, baddest civil rights organization in the history of the world. Don’t retreat into being part of a silent majority of apathetic citizens, notable primarily for their silence.

Heed the words of Frederick Douglass, one of our city’s greatest citizens, who said: “It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.”

Bring a little fire, a little thunder, a little conscience into our community. And in the spirit of this organization, take action to address our outrage.

Thank you for inviting me tonight. And thank you for your work to make our city a more just place.

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