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.