As President, it is my great pleasure to welcome you on behalf of the Executive Committee and general membership of this proud branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP-Riverside Branch).

Often I am asked, “What is the NAACP? What does it stand for?” and “How can I support my branch more?” I believe these questions deserve honest answers. To this end, the NAACP is the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. Founded in 1909, its mission is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.

I invite you to study this premier civil rights organization’s rich and storied history. I also ask you to consider becoming a Member or a Life Member of this Branch, to lend your voice and support to the fight for justice and freedom for all, regardless of race, creed or color.

Back in the early seventies, a woman came on the scene asking the Democratic National Committee to recognize the Mississippi Freedom Party, and in so doing, to allow this group to present its credentials and subsequently be recognized as a legitimate group, who could also vote for the national presidential candidate. This lady was not well schooled, and she didn’t speak the best “King’s English,” but for all that she wasn’t, she more than made up for it with her indomitable spirit, her integrity, and her desire to seek justice and fair play for all.

Now, I was a teen at the time, but I remember clearly watching history unfold on my television set, as Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, the woman many called the “Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement,” led the way, determined and undeterred, to win the right to vote for Black Americans in the South.

I remember that, as I watched, I thought to myself, “this lady tells it like it is, and stands tall and unrelenting in the face of hostility.” Right then, she became someone I vowed to be more like, someone I promised myself never to forget. She became someone who would remind me, in good times and in bad, to stand for what I believe in and to lend support to making freedom a reality for all; to push for better opportunities for all members of our respective community.

And, when I think of the relevancy of the NAACP and as our branch plans its activities around “Doing Something for Freedom” everyday, I reflect on Ms. Fannie Lou and her quotes and I use them, as a measuring stick for how we can each “speak truth to power”.

Some of her quotes include:

•    “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

•    “To support whatever is right, and to bring in justice where we’ve had so much injustice.”

•    “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

•    “Whether you have a Ph.D., or no D, we’re in this bag together, and whether you’re from Morehouse or No house, we’re still in this bag together. Not to fight to try to liberate ourselves from the man — this is another trick to get us fighting among ourselves — but to work together with the black man, the white man, the brown man, the red man, then we will have a better chance to just act as human beings, and to be treated as human beings in our sick society.”

•    ”There is one thing you have got to learn about this movement. Three people are better than no people.”

One writer stated that Fannie Lou Hamer made her realize that we’re nothing unless we can hold this system of ours accountable, and the way we hold this system accountable is to vote and to take an active role in the solutions.  I agree. I conclude by urging you to become a part of this movement, and may the spirit of Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer live on in all we set out to do to make our society a little better than we found it.

Yours in the Struggle,

Waudieur E. Rucker-Hughes
President, Riverside Branch NAACP