Speech delivered before the Florida State branch of the NAACP, ca. 2004

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I was impressed by the male ensemble - the Morehouse Glee Club better watch out.

Adora Nweze President Gary Ms. Moore, Friends It is such a treat to see Yolanda King; for many years in Atlanta we were neighbors, living two houses apart. She was Yotu then.

We all know she is the daughter of the country's premier apostle of peace and justice, but let us not forget she is also the daughter of a dynamic woman who carries on her husband's work today.

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One hundred years ago, W. E. B. DuBois published The Souls of Black Folk, famously predicting that the problem of the 20th Century would be the problem of the color line.

Fifty years ago President Harry Truman desegregated the American military.

Forty years ago last month, NAACP field Secretary Medgar Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi.

And forty years ago next month, Martin Luther King, Jr., fresh from the battlefields of Birmingham, told the nation of his dream at the March on Washington.

AndWe meet in a place state where NAACP history dates to 1915, when the first Flordia branch was started in Key West. In 1916 W. E. B. DuBois came to Florida to energize our members, as we gather this week to be energized again.

In 1917, James Weldon Johnson, himself a native Floridian, organized Branches in Florida in his capacity as our first National Field Secretary.

By 1926, perhaps decimated by World War I, not a single dues-paying Florida Branch existed, but the NAACP stayed in the fight. It took Chambers v. Florida to the United States Supreme Court, saving an innocent black man from the electric chair. In 1940, NAACP attorneys filed suit to equalize teachers' salaries, the first such suit in the South.

When the Florida State Conference was formed in 1941, Harry T. Moore became its President and later its full-time Executive Secretary along with officers E. D. Davis, W. J. H. Black, Frank Burts, Emma Pickett, Mamie Mike, and K. S. Johnson.

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On Christmas night 1951, Harry T. Moore and his wife, Harriet, joined the ranks of civil rights martyrs when the KKK bombed their home, killing them both. This occasion honors them and

Moore's successor was Robert W. Saunders, Sr., who died thislast year. When Bob Saunders replaced Harry T. Moore, he stepped into big footprints, but he more than filled them. He was brave and daring and innovative and hard working -- and we all miss him terribly.

After Brown v. Board, Thurgood Marshall targeted Florida, saying of the state:

"We found not one instance on the part of the political leadership . . . to even consider the possibility of desegregating."

The NAACP sued the school system here in Dade County.

Florida fought back. They formed an infamous body, known as the Johns Committee, to investigate the NAACP, and it "embarked on a witch-hunt that would last for years."

But the NAACP helped to force desegregation in the public schools of 20 Florida counties and attacked segregation statewide -- at service stations, cafeterias, in the Florida National Guard, and the University of Florida. The list goes on and on.

As Bob Saunders wrote of the NAACP's role in Florida during the 1960s,

"We welcomed others to the fight. . . . Still, we were here before the others came, and we were there after some of them left."iii

And we're still here!

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The Florida NAACP story is full of champions -- Father Theodore Gibson, Reverends A. Leon Lowery and C. K. Steele, Rutledge Pearson, Charles Cherry, Flossie Currington, Ellen P. Greene -- the list is long.

Today, Florida is the fourth largest state in the union, with a population becoming more diverse every day. Whites account for 65 percent, blacks 15, Asians 2, and Hispanics 17 percent.

We know that nationally, as in Florida, Hispanics are now the largest minority, and we are reminded of our need to make common cause with all who share our condition and concerns. Although Latinos are less cohesive as a group than blacks -- identifying themselves by place of origin rather than race and collectively lacking a shared history in the United States -- blacks and Latinos, as well as other minorities, will move forward fastest if we move forward together.

We've said it again and again -- in the NAACP, we believe colored people come in all colors. Anyone who shares our condition, values and concerns is more than welcome.

Although Florida boasts a diverse population and has witnessed a huge growth in its minority student population, its schools -- in keeping with national trends -- are becoming more segregated. We know that when properly enforced, Brown v. Board of Education does work -- because we've seen it work, here in Florida and elsewhere throughout the South.

In 1980, the average black student in Florida, as a result of enforcement efforts under Brown, was attending a school that was half white. By 2000, however, that student's school was only about

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