State NAACP to Host Annual Conference in Tuscaloosa for First Time in Memory

The state organization of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will host their annual conference here in Tuscaloosa for the first time in memory, maybe ever.

Leaders from the Alabama office joined the Tuscaloosa chapter on the banks of the Black Warrior River in late April to share the news.

Lisa Young, the President of the Tuscaloosa Chapter, said this was a huge honor, and up to 200 activists will spend a few days in town for the conference this September.

"It is a proud moment for our city and our branch. It is not just a recognition of where we are, but who we are and the work that we continue to do in the fight for justice, equality and freedom, Young said. "Since its founding in 1909, the NAACP has stood at the forefront of civil rights in this country."

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Young pointed to the organization's great victories both within Alabama and outside of it— Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the march on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Now, possibly for the first time in more than 70 meetings, the state chapter will assemble its leaders in Tuscaloosa in September.

"The annual convention is a space for learning, organizing, and planning," Young said. "It's where policies are shaped, partnerships are formed, and future leaders are inspired."

Bernard Simleton, the President of the Alabama NAACP, said that as long as he has been affiliated with the state organization, they have never met in the Druid City. He said the meeting is more important than ever.

"The NAACP is a non-partisan organization, but we believe that people who hold office, whether it's the president of the United States or whether it's a local city council one should represent all the people and not just some of the people," he said. "And not to be political, but we have, in the last 100 days, seen an attempt to transform the United States into something that the NAACP is not in support of."

He said the convention is an opportunity to get unified, even in times of adversity.

"When we arrive here in September, we're going to have workshops, we're going to have motivational speakers that will recharge our engines," he said. "We will be able to go back to our communities and implement programs and projects that will benefit our communities."

The state NAACP has also been busy in Tuscaloosa seeking to install a historical marker commemorating the lives, deaths and legal struggles of Black coal miners who were trapped underground by flood waters in 1901.

"The families of the three victims [who died] and four of the survivors sued the hospital, which was a remarkable thing at the peak of Jim Crow segregation," said historian George Adair. "This was the same year in which Alabama's constitutional convention convened, only a few months after this event, producing a constitution that gave folks who oversaw elections the tools to block African Americans from the ballot box for the next 60 years. It was the year prior to the segregation of the mental health institutions in Alabama."

For updates on the September NAACP conference and more news from West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.