NAACP, Bond celebrate dreams, successes

The Charleston chapter of the NAACP celebrated "bold dreams, big victories" Friday at its 93rd annual fundraising banquet.

The event, which featured keynote speaker Julian Bond, chairman of the board of the century-old civil rights organization since 1998, drew a few hundred supporters to the Charleston Area Convention Center. Tickets cost $100 per person.

Bond was 20 years old when he co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960 and emerged as a national civil rights leader. Since then, Bond has served as the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Georgia state legislator, college instructor and documentary narrator.

His is the voice in the critically

acclaimed PBS series on the civil rights movement, "Eyes on the Prize." Bond was the recipient in July of the NAACP's highest honor, the Spingarn Medal.

Bond, 69, was the latest in a string of high-profile speakers invited to Charleston by the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In recent years, the Freedom Fund Banquet has featured Rep. John Lewis, Jesse Jackson Jr., Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

The corporate chairwoman of this year's banquet committee was local philanthropist and political activist Linda Ketner. The evening's speakers included Mayor Joe Riley, County Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley and state Rep. J. Seth Whipper, D-North Charleston.

In his address Friday night, Bond took a broad brush to NAACP history and cited numerous efforts currently under way. He said race always has been, and remains, at the center of much national injustice. Discrimination persists in the form of economic, health and criminal-justice disparities, he said.

"Truth is, race trumps class," he said. "Race never stands apart from economic realities."

Bond also made reference to U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson's "you lie" comment during President Obama's recent speech to Congress, calling the South Carolina Republican a "miscreant" who ought to "take a hike."

And, he noted, that the Confederate battle flag has kept him away from the state.

"I haven't been to South Carolina for a number of years because of the boycott," he said. "I wouldn't be here now except for this invitation to be with the Charleston branch. As long as the Confederate flag is flying over the Statehouse lawn, I won't be back."

The chapter also recognized several community figures during the dinner.

Mignon Clyburn, a commissioner with the Federal Communications Commission, received the Trailblazer Award; Rep. David Mack III was given the J. Arthur Brown Award for his work in the state; and two high school students -- Burke High School valedictorian Alora Singletary and West Ashley High School honors student Brian McCann -- received the Septima Poinsette Clark Award, also known as the Students Excelling in Education Award.

A special recognition award for minority-owned businesses went to Ascue's Paint and Body Shop, a 40-year-old, family-run operation in Mount Pleasant.

Dot Scott, president of the local chapter, which is the oldest in the state, said its main focus of 2009 was the issue of public education, likely to remain on the agenda next year.

The group supports the development of charter schools, but draws the line at delivering public funds to private schools, Scott said in an interview a few days before the banquet.

Whether private-school funding comes in the form of vouchers, tax credits or something else, it would likely subsidize families prone to send their children to private schools anyway, leaving a majority of low-income children in underfunded public schools, she said.

The ongoing battle prompted the formation of Citizens United for Public Schools, an NAACP-sponsored organization meant to have broad appeal.

"We're trying to emphasize that the NAACP is not just for black people," she said. "These issues cross color lines."

The Rev. Nelson B. Rivers III, a Charleston native now serving as the NAACP's national vice president of stakeholder relations, gave the membership appeal at the dinner. In an interview Wednesday, Rivers said the NAACP is especially focused on national health care reform. Access to affordable health care is "the civil rights issue of our time," he said.

Critics of reform remind him of those who argued against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, claiming it would hurt small business and cost the nation too much money, he said. Because many of the immediate beneficiaries of health care reform would be millions of uninsured and underinsured minorities, working poor and unemployed Americans, the issue is a matter of justice, he said.

"I don't know what else we're dealing with in Congress (that) can make that kind of one-time change for good," Rivers said.