City administration ruffles feathers by excluding NAACP from MLK Day program

9th January 2012   ·   0 Comments

If New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu had hoped to use the annual Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday to extend an olive branch to Black leaders in New Orleans, he certainly took a left turn somewhere that is likely to land him in even hotter water with Black leaders and residents.

A major brouhaha arose last week after the president of the New Orleans branch of the NAACP disclosed that the civil rights organization had been excluded by the mayor from participating in the upcoming MLK Day program.

On Thursday, Mayor Landrieu and the New Orleans Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Planning Com­mission announced the schedule of events for the city’s 26th annual MLK holiday celebration.

This year’s theme is “United in Times of Challenge.” Mayor Landrieu said he’s hopeful that in remembering Dr. King’s legacy, the city can overcome its current challenges together as one. “We face many challenges today—violence, fear, division, but I know, together, we as citizens can overcome these challenges and act to improve the lives of our people.”

While Landrieu talked about overcoming fear and division in New Orleans, it appears that the decision to exclude the local branch of the NAACP from the MLK Day program is already having the opposite effect.

In the past, the NAACP has participated in the city-sponsored MLK march but decided this past November to get involved in the actual MLK Day program.

King told The Louisiana Weekly that it has been very difficult to get a straight answer from anyone in the Landrieu administration or members of the MLK Holiday Planning Commission.

When asked about claims that the NAACP was excluded from the MLK Day program because it missed the deadline for participants, King said, “That’s the latest lie and excuse that they’ve come up with.”

King, who is also a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, says he went to an SCLC meeting on November 11, 2011 and expressed an interest in participating in the MLK program. “The Rev, Norwood Thompson told those in attendance that planning was about to begin for the MLK Day program and he wanted (King) and the NAACP to be a full participant in the event and really work with the SCLC on it,” King told The Louisiana Weekly.

When the MLK Holiday Planning Commission began meeting, King was unable to attend but asked members of the NAACP to attend the meetings and report back to him about any new developments. He says that on December 9 he received a phone call from an NAACP member who told him that the member had a conversation with a woman from the city about the NAACP’s role in the MLK program and was told that the NAACP was not going to be involved.

“When he asked her what she meant, she told him that the mayor didn’t want us involved,” King told The Louisiana Weekly.

King says he called Rev. Thompson who told him that the NAACP was still going to be involved in the program and that “if the NAACP is not involved, we’re all going to walk away from it.”

King says he assumed that everything had been worked out after that phone call.

But then he received a phone call on Dec. 20 from City Hall with a registration form for any organization that wanted to participate in the march. King filled it out and sent it in but then realized that he hadn’t heard anything else about the NAACP’s role in the program.

He says he attended an open MLK Holiday Planning Commis­sion meeting on Dec. 28 and asked the committee about the NAACP’s participation in the program. King says he was told to bring his concerns to Rev. Thompson, who was in attendance at the December 28 meeting, after which the committee would make a decision about the NAACP’s participation in the program.

King says that after he left that meeting, a member of the Landrieu administration at that meeting distributed a draft program for the opening ceremony and several other events, including a Save Our Sons event. Although some names had been included, there were several slots that had not yet been filled, he said.

“It’s important that everyone understand that there were still slots on the program that had not been filled,” King told The Louisiana Weekly. “It’s also important to note that this information came from the Mayor’s Office, not the planning commission.”

After trying unsuccessfully to contact Rev. Thompson several times, King attended a January 4 MLK planning commission meeting, during which he was told just before the meeting started by Wes Bias, deputy director of the city’s Office of Neighborhood Engage­ment, the mayor decided that the NAACP was not going to be on the program.

When the meeting started, King said he asked why the NAACP had been excluded and was told that the civil rights organization was not included on the program because it had not participated on the program in the past. “That’s the excuse that I got,” King told The Louisiana Weekly.

King says that when he pressed the issue, several members of the planning committee began “hooting and hollering” about commission members not even being included on the program. He said someone complained about the mayor “hijacking the program, taking it over and putting it together the way he wants it.

“They just went on and on arguing about it, but what they were mainly upset about was commission members not being on the program,” King told The Louisiana Weekly.

King says that after meeting privately for about 30 minutes, the commission members returned and said they would meet with the mayor about committee members not being included on the MLK Day program. When he asked if the committee had made a decision about the NAACP’s involvement in the program, King says he was told that the commission had enough on its hands trying to get its own members included on the program.

“After that, I didn’t push the issue,” King told The Louisiana Weekly. “I said, ‘Fine. That’s fine.’ And I left it there.”

“This is really an insult, not only to the NAACP but the entire community, both Black and white,” Danatus King, president of the New Orleans branch of the NAACP, told FOX 8 News Thursday. “Dr. King gave up his life fighting for civil rights and one of the major organizations that he was involved with was the NAACP.”

When asked for comment on the MLK program and the exclusion of the NAACP, Communications Director Devona Dolliole, told FOX 8 News, “All organizations and citizens are encouraged to participate in the MLK holiday celebration.”

The city’s opening program will begin at Congo Square at Armstrong Park on Monday, January 16, 2012, at 9:30 a.m., followed by the 26th annual MLK Memorial March at 10:00 a.m.

The march will begin at the entrance of Armstrong Park at N. Rampart and St. Ann. It goes down N. Rampart towards downtown. N Rampart turns into Oretha Castle Haley at Calliope. The parade continues down Oretha Castle Haley and makes a right turn on MLK Blvd. It goes up MLK to S. Claiborne and ends at MLK monument on S. Claiborne and Felicity.

This year isn’t the first time there has been discord and conflict surrounding the annual MLK Day celebration. Last year, the city and some Black leaders gathered at City Hall for the annual observance while another celebration dating back several decades was held in the Lower Ninth Ward and attended by many of the city’s grassroots leaders and community activists.

Relations have been tense bet­ween the Landrieu administration and some of the city’s civil rights organizations and community acti­vists since Landrieu prevented King, the Rev. Raymond Brown, president of the New Orleans chapter of the New York-based Nation­al Action Network, and others from attending a press conference in late November about finding solutions to the city’s escalating Black-on-Black violence.

Landrieu reportedly took offense with the NAACP’s call for an investigation of NOPD Superin­ten­dent Ronal Serpas’ participation in the police department’s pension plan, telling reporters that NAACP branch president Danatus King has been criticizing the police chief since he was tapped to lead the department. King has denied those charges, although he has been critical of the NOPD chief’s performance in office with regard to the pension issue, off-duty paid details and unconstitutional stops of residents in some sections of the city.

In a letter to New Orleans residents dated Friday, Jan. 6, a day usually set aside for indulging in king cake and the start of the annual Carnival season, Danatus King encouraged those who were also offended by the Landrieu administration’s decision to exclude the NAACP from participating in the MLK program to “Picket the city — then watch the games,” a reference to the New Orleans Saints playoff game against the Detroit Lions Saturday and the LSU game against Alabama for the BCS Championship Monday night.

“I, and many other people that love and respect the NAACP, are upset at the disrespect shown by the city towards the NAACP., ”King wrote. “A group of us are going to let the nation know how upset we are by picketing in front the New Orleans Superdome before the Saints’ game on Saturday and the LSU game on Monday. We will start picketing at 5:00 p.m. both days.

“This picketing is being organized by private citizens that love and respect the NAACP,” King added. “It is not being organized by the NAACP because that would take too long. Please do not wear any NAACP paraphernalia to the picket.”

“With regard to the latest controversy about the exclusion of the NAACP from the MLK Day event, it all comes down to who you believe,” Ramessu Merria­men Aha, a New Orleans-born businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “After seeing the mayor throw tantrums and block civil rights leaders and community activists from attending a meeting about saving the lives of young Black men, I’m inclined to believe the NAACP. But that’s just me.”

This article was originally published in the January 9, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper