The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was in town from July 26 to August 1. Over 7,000 people attended nationwide, with hundreds of local and national vendors. The 114th National Convention allowed Boston to reintroduce itself. And Boston showed up and showed out. The theme, “Thriving Together,” created a milieu to celebrate and acknowledge Black Boston’s community’s collective entrepreneur and political power.

The Convention was here 41 years ago, in 1982. During that year, the 73rd NAACP National Convention occurred when the news of the day was about an African American home firebombed because three Black families had moved into an all-white Dorchester enclave. That event, coupled with lingering residual animus derived from the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s, left a pox on Beantown, keeping not only the Convention away but also African Americans not wanting to visit, giving the city its earned reputation as one of the most racist cities in the country. Today, Boston presents itself ready to change - not to erase its past, but rather as a city now able to provide opportunities for people of color and uphold their civil and human rights without discrimination.

Also, the NAACP Convention came to Boston when the organization’s acceptance of its LGBTQ+ members was no longer an ongoing controversy. The NAACP was once as homophobic as the Black Church.

However, in 2017 Michael Curry, Esq., then President of the Boston chapter, helped foster the change. That year, Curry keynoted The Bayard Rustin Community Breakfast, an annual HIV/AIDS awareness event for LGBTQ+ people of color. His message and outreach of inclusion invited many of us who left the NAACP to rejoin, myself included. Curry, now a member of the National Board of Directors of the NAACP, is also President & CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers.

In 2018, the NAACP did a-180 degree turn on LGBTQ+ issues when it invited me and other LGBTQ+ activists from across the country to its 109th Annual Convention in July at the Henry B Gonzales Convention Center, San Antonio, TX.

“I am pleased to extend this letter of invitation, requesting your participation as a panelist during the LGBTQ workshop titled ‘The State of LGBTQ People of Color in America.’ The session will take place on Tuesday, July 17, 2018, from 2:30pm to 4:30 pm.

The panel will focus on the following discussion topics:

Effective Strategies for LGBTQ Activism

Evolution of Thinking: Acceptance & Inclusion

Living Out Loud: LGBTQ Representation in the Workplace, Congress and Media

Power of the Vote: Mobilization, Registration, Anti-discrimination Laws & How to Overcome Them

My colleagues and I sincerely hope that you will accept this invitation. In connection with convention-related LGBTQ events, we will cover travel and hotel accommodation expenses.”

At the NAACP Town Hall, Leon W. Russell, Chair of the NAACP National Board of Directors, apologized on behalf of the organization. “You cannot profess to be a civil rights fighter and then insert exceptions,” Russell stated. “It’s none of your business who I love. You just have to let me have the right to do that.”

Still Today, The NAACP Town Hall meeting is one of its most-watched programs on C-Span.

For many years, there was an ongoing debate between civil rights v gay rights. The Legal Defense Fund, also referred to as the NAACP-LDF, was founded in 1940 as a part of the NAACP, but now operates as a completely separate entity- released a historical statement that best explains why the struggle for same-sex marriage is indeed a civil rights struggle: “It is undeniable that the experience of African Americans differs in many important ways from that of gay men and lesbians; among other things, the legacy of slavery and segregation is profound. But differences in historical experiences should not preclude the application of constitutional provisions to gay men and lesbians who are denied the right to marry the person of their choice.”

Today, the NAACP has an LGBTQIA Committee Chairperson, Demar Roberts from S. C., who works to protect and advance the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. At the Convention LGBTQIA Reception, former Cambridge mayor and now Councilwoman E. Denise Simmon (the first openly lesbian African-American mayor in the United States.) was awarded the first NAACP social justice award to an LGBTQ+ person.

Holding the National Convention of the NAACP in Boston was important. As the first chartered branch of the NAACP, Boston helped lay the foundation for the vitality and vibrancy of black social justice activism. The pox on Boston’s reputation as one of the most racist cities in our nation has held us all back, all Bostonians - black and white- and the entire Commonwealth. And the NAACP once homophobic stance on LGBTQ+ civil rights held the black community back and the organization from thriving together.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

member and Columnist, The Reverend

Monroe is an ordained minister,

motivational speaker and she speaks for

a sector of society that is frequently

invisible. Rev. Monroe does a weekly

Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on

WGBH (89.7 FM), on Boston Public Radio

and a weekly Friday segment “The Take”

on New England Channel NEWS (NECN).

She’s a Huffington Post blogger and a

syndicated religion columnist. Her

columns appear in cities across the

country and in the U.K, and Canada. Also

she writes a column in the Boston home

LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows and

Cambridge Chronicle. A native of

Brooklyn, NY, Rev. Monroe graduated

from Wellesley College and Union

Theological Seminary at Columbia

University, and served as a pastor at an

African-American church in New Jersey

before coming to Harvard Divinity School

to do her doctorate. She has received the

Harvard University Certificate of

Distinction in Teaching several times

while being the head teaching fellow of

the Rev. Peter Gomes, the Pusey Minister

in the Memorial Church at Harvard who is

the author of the best seller, THE GOOD

BOOK. She appears in the film For the

Bible Tells Me So and was profiled in the

Gay Pride episode of In the Life, an

Emmy-nominated segment. Monroe’s

coming out story is profiled in “CRISIS:

40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social,

and Religious Pain and Trauma of

Growing up Gay in America" and in

"Youth in Crisis." In 1997 Boston

Magazine cited her as one of Boston's 50

Most Intriguing Women, and was profiled

twice in the Boston Globe, In the Living

Arts and The Spiritual Life sections for

her LGBT activism. Her papers are at the

Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College's

research library on the history of women

in America. Her website is

irenemonroe.com. Contact the Rev.

Monroe and BC.