On December 9, 2011, I had the honor to travel to the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. That is where I met Dr. Cornel West. Dr. West was the keynote speaker for the rally of Mumia Abu-Jamal. During his speech, Dr. West said something that was rather intriguing. Dr. Cornel West said, "When people are treated unjustly, you have to say something and you have to do something". I thought about the injustices that is dwelling in my own community of Penns Grove, NJ. There are complex challenges of police-brutality, police-accountability, under-performing school district and the lack of hiring of minority teachers.
Some of the injustices in the school district that were previously mentioned, I had wrote about them in my recent letter to the editor. The fact that since 2003 until present, there has been a hiring of 151 teachers, eight of them is African-American. In addition to the disproportionate of the hiring of minority teachers; At the Lafayette Pershing School (Preschool thru Kindergarten grades) there is only 1 African American teacher and she has been there for about 30 years and she is the last African American hired at that school; the last minority to be hired at the school for that matter.
My question is why the NAACP of Salem County has not been vocal, privately and publicly about these relevant issues? The issues that I have wrote about are civil rights and human rights issues, in which the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was predicated upon. In fact, the NAACP was formed partly in response to the continuing horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, the capital of Illinois. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals that included Mary White Ovington and Oswald Garrison Villard, both the descendants of abolitionists, William English Walling and Dr. Henry Moscowitz issued a call for a meeting to discuss racial justice. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American; including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell.
On December 5, 2011, when I had brought the lack of hiring of minority teachers to the school board, the Superintendent of Schools, went on the record to say that the NAACP cancelled three times, in regards to a meeting about a hiring issue of a minority teacher. When you are the President or leader of a local chapter of a national civil rights organization in NAACP, you must uphold the standards in which the organization is based upon. These particular issues are road blocks in the advancement of colored people that is not address by people in authority in chapters of such organization as the NAACP. Part of the objective of the NAACP's mission statement; NAACP has been the leading advocate to ensure social justice and equality for people of color. The problem that Salem County NAACP has, they are not holding true to their mission statement.
When you have people in authority that know of the county's climate of racial discriminatory practices, in policies and procedures, as well as other injustices that are instituted and still remain silent about the matter. You not only contradict the mission statement of the NAACP, but you do a disservice to the founders of the NAACP and the people you are to serve. All I say is be true to what you said on paper. It is the community responsibility to put pressure on local leaders. We have to make them get off their chairs of complacency and their stools of "do nothings".
Albert Einstein said, "We live in a dangerous and evil world, not because of the people who do evil but the people who will not do anything about it".
Walter L. Hudson Sr.
Penns Grove Community Activist
Penns Grove, NJ
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