Barrett’s absence delays the inescapable NAACP victory

The NAACP has been scoring against backwards-leaning politicians for decades. U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett is just the latest in a long line who thought they could beat it. He won’t.

In no way does Barrett’s failure to give himself permission to participate in the Lansing NAACP chapter’s town hall last week mean this is over. The NAACP would not be pushed by Barrett into a “members only” event. It will neither aid nor abet the privatization of government.

Chapter President Harold Pope met twice with Barrett to invite him to appear.

We tried, Pope said, but the meetings were unproductive. See the empty chair with Barrett’s name on it?

Keep trying, Harold Pope. Barrett skirted this first town hall, but history says the NAACP will succeed and grow its influence from the seven organizations that came in as co-sponsors this time.

As the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, the NAACP wrote the playbook for all organizations that want to use the Constitution to shape the U.S.

In addition to creating the largest single collection of records the Library of Congress has ever acquired, NAACP records are also the most heavily used by patrons. Inquiring minds want to know.

Just the sheer number of records, documents, photographs, audio recordings, meeting minutes — 28,132 records in total — shows how patient the NAACP was over a century. It just doesn’t rush out and do stuff. It plans and plots. It prepares and delivers.

At its height, the organization had 432,000 members. Put an equal sign between the NAACP and power.

The NAACP captures the imagination of the people, with how sexy a partner it is. In her 2024 novel “Harlem Rhapsody,” Victoria Christopher Murray seizes on the story of W.E.B. Dubois and Jesse Redmon Fauset. He was the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard University, a founder of the NAACP and editor of its popular Crisis magazine. His assistant editor, Fauset, ushered in the Harlem Renaissance, the African American cultural revolution.

The Brown vs Board of Education victory, which desegregated public schools, was masterminded by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer who became the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice. That was Thurgood Marshall.

Those who think that Marshall’s legal victory to equalize education for African Americans happened in the timespan of a one-hour courtroom drama, or that the outcome was a mystery, should look for the rebroadcast. Those bent on oppressing the middle-class economic progress today meet NAACP resistance. Its pressure grows every day.

The NAACP is an on-the-record organization. Search online for it. Click one of the first hits, even MapQuest. In addition to office location, it describes the Lansing branch as a community organization dedicated to promoting civil rights and social justice for all individuals. In this way, the NAACP is diverse like the reparations group Justice League of Lansing.

The evidence was on display at the town hall. Twenty-eight speakers included African Americans, whites, men, women, trans, Mexicans, one youth, people from Ingham and Livingston counties, two of the seven counties that compose the 7th District. 

The Lansing branch has a fine generational pedigree. Just the term “branch” indicates a great strong family tree, but could it be that the Lansing branch of the NAACP was too cooperative with Barrett?

Back in the 1960s era of Black Power, negotiations with the powerful went like this: All the parties sat down to the table and then one of the African American men pulled out a big knife and stabbed the table hard enough to lodge the blade tip tight in the top, while the rest of the knife shivered and quivered. Then they talked.

If that is a myth, it’s one that illustrates the unrelenting reality of what abolitionist Frederick Douglass said in 1857: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Douglass believed that with persistence, positive change would occur.  And it has.

That’s history, critics scoff. Where’s change today? Or as Janet Jackson sang, “What have you done for me lately?”

In Lansing, the NAACP will do the tedious work: continue demanding that Rep. Barrett represent his constituents, until it happens.

Barrett answers constituents’ concerns with machines and robotic humans. He’s known to turn away constituents who speak up for the 30% of the federal workforce who are veterans, many of whom may find themselves out of work due to Elon Musk’s workforce reduction efforts.

The national NAACP files a lot of documents containing the word “whereas.”  Lawsuits have been filed to protect voting rights in two states, Georgia and Florida. It has kept up with new issues. Among its eight issue areas is environmental and climate justice.  And whereas Hollywood pretty much ignored African American entertainment artists, the NAACP Image Awards have recognized our own for 56 years now.

The NAACP slogan says, “We can’t do any of this important work without one important person: you.”

Membership in the NAACP cost less than one month of cable television streaming service: $30 for adults 21 years and older; $10 for youth.

For another 10 bucks, buy a Women in NAACP — WIN — membership. For more information scan their QR code. Or call 517-299-0334.

Lansing resident Dedria Humphries Barker is the author of “Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, A Colored Man’s Widow.” Her column appears monthly.