National NAACP Chair Sticks With Her Boss' Racism
By Joey Matthews
NAACP Chair Roslyn Brock
Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press
(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The chair of the national NAACP had a grand opportunity to publicly denounce discrimination issues related to Bon Secours. Instead, Roslyn M. Brock embraced Bon Secours at a Richmond, Va. event honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Bon Secours vice president called the health care giant “my family.” Brock has come under fire for supporting Bon Secours’ racist practices related to the Washington professional football team and its discriminatory training camp deal in Richmond. Bon Secours paid $6.4 million to sponsor the training camp that carries the racist and derogatory nickname of the D.C. team.
Brock failed to denounce the racism issues again when she recently delivered the keynote address at the 36th Annual Community Leaders Breakfast at a Downtown hotel. Bon Secours officials sat at a table near the podium where she spoke. NAACP members also were in attendance.
Brock also recognized the NAACP members, but made no reference to them being her family. The event is sponsored by Virginia Union University, Brock’s alma mater, led by President Claude G. Perkins. It draws elected officials, business leaders, members of the faith community and other community members to commemorate Dr. King.
The Richmond Free Press challenged in an editorial the day before the community breakfast to “take a public stance in support of the NAACP’s opposition to the racist practices of Bon Secours.”
Those practices include Bon Secours’ support of the D.C. team’s racist and derogatory nickname and Bon Secours’ sponsorship of the team’s discriminatory training camp deal. That deal denied Black-owned and other locally owned businesses vending opportunities inside the Washington NFL camp that opened last summer. The Richmond Free Press has repeatedly called on Brock to denounce the Bon Secours support of the racism issues.
Her refusal to do so calls into question whether her loyalties lie with Bon Secours or the NAACP. Brock also refused for several months last year to call on the D.C. team to change itsracist and derogatory nickname. The Free Press announced last year it would no longer use the D.C. team’s hateful nickname in its news columns.
Only after the Free Press chronicled her refusal to denounce the hateful nickname did Brock join with national NAACP interim President Lorraine M. Miller to issue a statement on the organization’s website criticizing the D.C. team’s racist nickname.
Apparently upset over media criticism of her backing of the racist practices, she lashed out at the media “that demonize their leaders on the front of newspapers.”
State NAACP Executive Director King Salim Khalfani also was at the event. In sharp contrast to Brock, he has been a consistent and loud critic of the D.C. team’s nickname and has lashed out at Bon Secours’ support of the discriminatory training camp deal.
In other remarks at the community breakfast, Brock challenged audience members to join Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s social justice campaign to uplift the poor.
“Stand with this governor. … and with the hundreds of thousands of citizens across this community to make this, our beloved community, one where we stand together, walk together, pray together and also we serve together.”
She added, “We must rededicate ourselves and even our lives to achieve Dr. King’s dream.”
She ripped into those looking to curb voting rights, turn back the clock on civil rights gains and sidetrack the Affordable Care Act. She joined Gov. McAuliffe’s call to expand Medicaid health coverage to more than 400,000 working Virginians.
“The hard truth is in America, across the length and breadth of this nation, race still matters in this country and the pendulum of justice is moving quickly backward for people of color and those who live below the poverty line,” she said.
In brief remarks, Gov. McAuliffe continued to promote his new Virginia way agenda to be “an open and welcoming state” with opportunity for all. He said doing so would “honor Dr. King’s spirit and his legacy of equality and service.”
Other elected officials in attendance: U.S. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, state Sen. Henry L. Marsh III, state Delegate Delores L. McQuinn and several City Council members.
Scott said he has attended every community breakfast but one.
“It’s an opportunity for the community to come together and show support for the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” he said.
Mayor Dwight C. Jones did not attend because of a death in the family, his office said. Dr. Allix B. James, president emeritus of Virginia Union, drew a standing ovation when he was presentedthe Lifetime of Service Award by Dr. W. Franklyn Richardson, chairman of the school’s board of trustees.
Now 91, he graduated from Virginia Union and went on to serve the school for more than 50 years. He was appointed the university’s seventh president in 1979 and served until 1985. He also taught at and served as dean of the university’s Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology.
Dr. James was the first African-American to be elected president of the Association of Theological Schools and the first to be elected president of the Virginia State Board of Education. Dr. James praised his deceased wife of 67 years, Susie Nickens James, for “the partnership that played the greatest role in making everything possible.”
He closed by saying: “As we face the rising sun of a new day that has begun, let us march on, fight on, legislate on, work on until the reality of Martin Luther’s dream becomes a true factor in American life. Until it is really honored and respected. Until complete victory is won.”