Florida Senate - 2009 (Corrected Copy) SR 662
By Senators Hill and Joyner
1-00618A-09 2009662__
1 Senate Resolution
2 A resolution recognizing February 12, 2009, as “NAACP
3 Day” in Florida.
4
5 WHEREAS, beginning with the moral conscience and guiding
6 principles of Dr. William Edward Burghardt Dubois, Henry
7 Moskowitz, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, Oswald
8 Garrison Villard, and William English Walling, the National
9 Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the “NAACP,”
10 was founded on February 12, 1909, in New York City, with 60
11 signatories forming the creation of a civil rights organization
12 that has built a 100-year legacy of constantly challenging the
13 tenets of social unrest, racial hatred, racial inequality, and
14 economic and political injustice, and
15 WHEREAS, a call was led by abolitionist Mary White Ovington
16 following the summer of 1908, when citizens were shocked by the
17 account of race riots in Springfield, Illinois, the home of
18 Abraham Lincoln, where a mob of the town’s “best citizens” raged
19 lawlessly for two days, killing and wounding scores of African
20 Americans, sparing neither sex nor age nor youth and driving
21 thousands from the city, and
22 WHEREAS, in the years that followed, in open acceptance of
23 the disenfranchisement of millions, the Supreme Court of the
24 United States, supposedly a bulwark of American liberties,
25 passed laws avowedly discriminatory and enforced in such a
26 manner that African-American citizens were not recognized as
27 human beings, and
28 WHEREAS, records reflect that, during these times of racial
29 hatred and discrimination, African Americans were ineligible to
30 vote, assemble, and share the same public accommodations and
31 educational institutions as their white counterparts, and
32 WHEREAS, in 1905, the Niagara Movement, an organization of
33 people of color formed by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois from Atlanta
34 University, held conferences at Niagara, Harper’s Ferry, and
35 Boston, the platform of which consisted of freedom of speech and
36 criticism; an unfettered and unsubsidized press; manhood
37 suffrage; the abolition of all caste distinctions based simply
38 on race and color; the recognition of the principle of human
39 brotherhood as a practical, present creed; the recognition of
40 the highest and best training as the monopoly of no class or
41 race; a belief in the dignity of labor; and a united effort to
42 realize these ideals under wise and courageous leadership, and
43 WHEREAS, on February 12, 1909, the National Negro
44 Committee, an organization that emerged from the Niagara
45 Movement, was founded in New York City and, at their second
46 conference on May 30, 1910, chose the name the National
47 Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and
48 WHEREAS, in 1910, Dr. W.E.B. Dubois assumed the role of
49 Director of Publicity and Research for the NAACP and created The
50 Crisis magazine, the official magazine of the NAACP, to serve as
51 the premier literary publication advocating for civil rights,
52 and
53 WHEREAS, the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of
54 Education in 1954 allowed for the integration of public schools
55 and is recognized as the pinnacle of the NAACP’s advocacy work,
56 laying the foundation for future progress in civil and human
57 rights in the United States, and
58 WHEREAS, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
59 further removed segregation and apartheid in the United States,
60 permitting once disenfranchised people of color to gain access
61 to the “American Dream” through the equal protection of the law,
62 and
63 WHEREAS, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 granted African
64 Americans the right to vote with the necessary protections and
65 safeguards against historical barriers of exclusion, and
66 WHEREAS, throughout its 100-year history, the NAACP has
67 been instrumental in social, economic, educational, and
68 political gains for a once disenfranchised race of people,
69 establishing itself as the oldest civil rights organization in
70 our nation, committed to the ongoing struggle against
71 disparities in these areas through a network of 2,200 branches
72 currently exceeding 500,000 members, and
73 WHEREAS, the NAACP Florida State Conference, through its 32
74 branches, continues the national and local fight for equality
75 and justice for people of color, whether it be through honoring
76 the lives of Harry T. or Harriett Moore or obtaining justice for
77 Martin Lee Anderson, NOW, THEREFORE,
78
79 Be It Resolved by the Senate of the State of Florida:
80
81 That the Senate, in recognition of the organization’s
82 countless historical contributions to the United States of
83 America and the state of Florida over the past century as the
84 champion for justice and racial equality for all citizens, duly
85 strengthening the Constitutions of the state of Florida and the
86 United States of America, commends the National Association for
87 the Advancement of Colored People and its 32 Florida branches
88 and proudly recognizes February 12, 2009, as “NAACP Day” in
89 Florida.