Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Dear Fellow Servants:

     I hope this letter finds you well, and continuing in the strength, the service of God, and the cause of justice.  My purpose for writing is to let you know that, I am offering myself as a servant to become the President of the North Carolina Conference of the NAACP.  Many persons throughout the state have asked me over the last two years to consider this cause.  After much prayer, contemplation, consideration, and counsel, I believe it is time for a healthy and vigorous debate about the vision and direction of the NAACP in our state and its role in the continuing struggle for justice, protection of civil rights, and the social well being of humanity.

    These are critical times.  I believe together we must forge a vision comparable to meet the ongoing challenges of racism, poverty, and regressive public policies that still invade our reality.  Furthermore, we must not only be reactive but proactive in challenging our own people to live up to the highest ideals and take responsibility for knowing what we must do for ourselves, irregardless of what others attempt to do to us.  Not only must we build coalitions to fight for civil rights, we must celebrate community, build positive coalitions for economic growth and entrepreneurial-ship, lift up the marvelous achievements, gifts of our people, and promote academic excellence.  We must be both agitator and innovator.  But, know when to be which.

       The prophet Amos of the bible said, “You can not be at ease in Zion”.  The freedom songwriter said, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest.”  And Jesus said, our task for a fruitful life must be, “To preach good news to the poor, healing to the broken, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to the captives…”  The genesis of the NAACP over 95 years ago, was to bring together a multiracial group of individuals to strive for advancement of “colored people” over and against the daunting realities of violence and social oppression. 

     W.E.B. Du Bois in his autobiography said, of our beginning,  “The NAACP started with a lynching 100 years after the birth of Abraham Lincoln.  In the city, Springfield, Illinois, which was his long time residence,  William English Walling, a white Southerner, dramatized the gruesome happening and a group of liberals formed a committee in New York, which I was invited to join.

    A conference was held in 1909.  This conference contained four groups: scientists who knew the race problem; philanthropists willing to help worthy causes; social workers ready to take up a new task of Abolition; and Negroes ready to join a new crusade for their emancipation”.

   These individuals did not always agree on methods, but had a common vision for “advancement”.  Their goal was to create and organize a non-partisan structure that could speak boldly truth to power for the benefit of justice.  The same coalition is still needed today.