Fayette NAACP event recognizes honorees
On a night focused on preparing the next generation of civil rights leaders, Dr. Wilburn Hayden Jr. spoke of the importance of celebrating past civil rights victories while looking to the future during his keynote address at the NAACP Fayette County Branch’s annual Human Rights Dinner on Saturday. Hayden, professor and director of the Master of Social Work program at California University of Pennsylvania, addressed the crowd of nearly 100 at the end of the three-hour event held at the Youghiogheny Western Baptist Association & Christian Center on Duck Hollow Road in Uniontown. The night’s theme was “Committed to Excellence: The Next Generation of Civil Rights Leaders.”
Hayden, who said he had lived most of his 57 years in the South, illustrated some of the ways he had experienced racism firsthand and how far the movement had come.
“It is important to celebrate the victories of the NAACP and the civil rights movement,” he said, while acknowledging that there still is work to be done.
“We’re not at the tip of the mountain, but we’re near the top,” he said. “It is important to recognize how far we’ve come in order to make the next step.”
Hayden used a recent experience in a taxi in the South when a white cab driver referred to him and his two African-American friends as “sir” to illustrate his point.
“It is in my recent memories when you could be assaulted or even killed for not saying ‘sir’ to a white man,” he said. “That is a real statement of the times to be addressed as sir or ma’am by a white Southerner.”
The civil rights movement has made great strides in his lifetime, Hayden said. After all, he told the crowd, he was born at home rather than at the hospital because it did not accept black patients.
“Hospitals today may discriminate in other ways, but if we show up, they have to let us in and that is a victory,” he said, acknowledging “deep pockets of resistance” still remain in the United States.
He also spoke of how the civil rights movement is “radically different” today and stressed that today’s leaders need to be “more flexible and creative” than in the past.
“Above all, the NAACP has to remain a player in our society,” he said.
And according to Clinton Anderson, president of the Fayette County Branch, part of the NAACP’s continued efforts focus on voting and voter registration. Anderson stressed the NAACP’s national campaign for voter turnout, “arrive with five,” and encouraged everyone to bring friends, neighbors and family members to the polls with them.
The night also featured appearances by several political candidates, including representatives from Gov. Ed Rendell’s campaign and Republican candidate Lynn Swann’s campaign, as well as an appearance by Lt. Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll.
While stressing that the NAACP is a non-partisan organization, Anderson said too many African-Americans “disenfranchise themselves by not voting or registering to vote.”
With a focus on the next generation of leaders, the Fayette County Branch also awarded several scholarships and awards on Saturday. Gwendolyn Ridgley, second vice president of the Fayette County Branch, recognized Shirley Williamson, Katrina Marshall, Malcom Jacobs, Jeanne Marie Grooms and Joseph Harris as recipients of the Dr. F.L. Vaughns Memorial Scholarship.
In addition to the scholarship recipients, several local individuals and organizations were honored for “commitment to excellence.” The Rev. Louis Ridgley received the Branch Service Award for excellence in civil rights; Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Laurel Region received the Youth Development Award; Commonwealth Marketing Group Inc. received the Employment and Training Award; and the Rev. Vincent Winfrey received the Pastoral Excellence Award.