Now that former U.S. Congressman Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) has stepped down as President and CEO of the NAACP, Bruce Gordon, former senior executive at Verizon Communications, Inc., was confirmed by the NAACP’s 64-member board as Mfume’s replacement on June 25, 2005. Anxious civil rights proponents ask, “Who is Bruce Gordon?” He is not a minister or politician and is virtually unknown in the civil rights movement! However, at Verizon he managed 34,000 employees and brought in $25 billion annual revenues. Alice Huffman, President of the California NAACP and a member of the NAACP search committee says, “It is not just about his business acumen, but his commitment to diversity and affirmative action.”

Mfume is now the first candidate to enter the U.S. Senate race in Maryland as a Democrat. However, he is likely to be opposed by another African American, Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele, a Republican, who has already launched his exploratory bid for next year’s U.S. Senate race. Last year I shared an annual co-award with the Lt. Governor, where he was being honored for taking the initiative, along with Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, to make Maryland the number one state in the Union for affirmative action. Either way, we may have another Black U.S. Senator who cares about his people. “It’s a “win-win” for Black folks in the State of Maryland as well as the U.S.”, states Petey Green, President, Prince Georges County, Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce.

Speaking of Republicans, some African Americans were a little surprised when Bill Frist, the anti-affirmative action Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader, called for the reauthorization of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in 2007, protecting the rights of Blacks to vote. Various discriminatory election practices were used very effectively, prior to the Act, to exclude Blacks from voting. At the same time Frist praised the new Anti-Lynching Resolution of the U.S. Senate. Unbelievably, between 1890 and 1952, seven U.S. Presidents petitioned Congress to ban lynching, and each bill died in the Senate; while over 4,700 people died from lynching by mobs. The practice of lynching followed slavery as an ugly expression of racism and intimidation of the Negro. The next time you are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, visit the African American Museum, and talk to the owner who once faced a southern lynch mob with a rope around his neck. At the last minute, a white woman called out, “He’s not the one!” They let him go. How tenuous life is to be Black in America!

The Struggle Continues
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