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NAACP official calls Alabama ‘Holy Ground’
The Rev. Nelson Rivers was the guest speaker for the Clarke County Branch of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Freedom Award Banquet held at the Fulton Head Start. He said the NAACP, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland is the “oldest, largest, most hated, most loved, most cussed and discussed organization” representing black people. “In some places in Alabama they just call it trouble,” he added. The South Carolina native joked that many people around the world believe “all black folk come from Alabama or Mississippi” but that is because everyone knows the historic events that have taken place in the states. Using a biblical analogy of God commanding Moses to take off his shoes because he was on Holy Ground, Rivers said the same is true of Alabama because of its role in the Civil R i g h t s movement.
He told his audience to be proud to be Alabamians but to use their legacy and their power to continue to fight for rights and improvements. Rivers said of Selma, “I was there when we defeated Smitherman [the mayor at the time].” He said Dr. Martin Luther King has been disfigured by time and turned into the “closest thing to a black God we have ever seen.” He said King is now the beloved father figure of Civil Rights but during his time he was “hated not just by white folks but by blacks too.”
He said King prophesized that the United States would not learn from Vietnam and that has turned out to be so with the current war in Iraq. He said President Bush has made the U.S. the “leper of the world” and that the “whole world is afraid of us” because of the war that is “shedding innocent blood for no reason at all.” He said Bush was determined to make Iraq a democratic nation “if we have to kill all of you [Iraqis] to do it.” “We took out one terrorist [Saddam] and replaced him with a whole nation full of terrorists.” Rivers said America has a “leadership deficit” in all areas and that the November election was a referendum that showed people were “fed up with what we have.”
Leadership is a problem on the national level but in homes too. Too often we don’t challenge our children that “just enough is not good enough,” Rivers said. He lectured the Clarke County group for not having a NAACP youth council. He told the mostly older group that young people must be mentored and developed to be leaders because the older generation will soon be gone with nobody left to take its place. He said too many of today’s leaders are in place by accident. “Did you ever think that George and Barbara Bush would have thought when little George was sitting up there drunk that he would one day be president?” he asked. He told the group that they were caretakers with an obligation to help make their communities and the world better but they also had an obligation to help develop future leaders. Rivers said a strong faith and reliance on God is important but that people must get up and work to make accomplishments.
He concluded, “How can you be from Alabama and be afraid? How can you be from Alabama and not have faith?”
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