'We will not be silent': Akron NAACP gala puts midterms, ongoing issues in historic context

State, national and local leaders of the NAACP met in Akron Sunday afternoon after a busy morning at church and busing "souls to the polls." At the John S. Knight Center, they reflected on the accomplishments of the past year and the challenges ahead, starting with the midterm election Tuesday.

The local chapter's annual Freedom Fund gala, which typically garners enough donations to cover 80% of the following year's budget, drew hundreds of members — "a community of believers who believe in what's good for the city of Akron," local NAACP President Judi Hill called them.

They came to sing, to pray, to remember, to sound an alarm in the Black community ahead of Tuesday's election, to honor resistance in all its forms and to defend an African heritage they said is under assault by people who would rather erase history than confront the legacy of racial discrimination.

Hill recognized a table reserved for the family of Jayland Walker, who was shot 46 times by Akron police following an attempted traffic stop this summer. Hill called the tragedy "the greatest historical challenge of my time" and an opportunity for the Akron community to come together "to protect and rebuild."

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A decision in the coming weeks or months following an external investigation of the Walker shooting "may not be pretty," she said. "But we have to have something to hold on to. We have to have something — a way to say that we as a city are coming together."

The event's headline speaker, former Beacon Journal and Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Debra Adams Simmons, discussed recent efforts at National Geographic, where she leads diversity, equity and inclusion.

Along with diversifying staff, the publication has intentionally been providing more inclusive storytelling on issues of gender, race, slavery and police traffic stops through the eyes of Black and brown motorists. Those efforts have reoriented the magazine, which was founded 23 years after the end of the Civil War.

Simmons celebrated more recent coverage looking back on issues buried in the first draft of history, like white predation of vibrant Black communities that were massacred, burned and kept from voting during the Lost Cause, or segregation and discrimination under Jim Crow, which she is just one generation removed from with her mother living in Alabama. (Simmons called Hill the best Sunday school teacher her sons ever had.)

The recent course correction at National Geographic has sometimes led to the loss of "thousands of subscribers" who are upset over stories covering concerns long held by marginalized populations.

Aliyah Griffith, a Ph.D. student, National Geographic explorer and the first Black woman to receive a master's degree in marine science from the University of North Carolina, spoke to the late-lunch gathering about finding and building community in "very unconventional spaces" for Black people.

The accomplished student has helped other young Black women and girls by pioneering academic and career trails, authoring a children's book called "My Secret Mermaid" and founding Mahogany Mermaids, a nonprofit that gives mentorship and encouragement to African-American girls, like herself, who find themselves in uncharted waters likes marine science.

What's on the ballot for Black voters

Hill took the opportunity to remind the audience of how the civil rights organization, since the last Freedom Fund, has transformed financial support into action: fielding more than 500 racial discrimination complaints, registering and transporting voters to the polls, collecting signatures and campaigning for Issue 10 (a citizen-led charter amendment for a civilian board overseeing aspects of Akron police) and more.

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The event filled the banquet hall with sponsors like Goodyear, most of the county's Black elected officials, U.S. House candidate Emilia Sykes and other Democrats (and a few Republicans) on the ballot Tuesday, along with the biggest names in next year's Democratic primary for mayor of Akron.

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Andre Washington, second vice president of the Ohio NAACP Conference, stepped onto the stage on behalf of the Ohio chapter's president and the "biggest, baddest, boldest and oldest civil rights organization in the world."

"Let me first say that these are some critical days before us," he began. "As sisters and brothers, I'm here to tell you that if you can't count on nobody else you can count on your NAACP. Sisters or brothers, the NAACP will not be silenced as they introduce anti-critical race theories that would erase our history as if we don't even exist. The NAACP will not be silenced as by voter suppression laws that hurt our community. We will not be silenced as they try to tell the woman what she can and can't do with her body.

"We will not be silent until we have fair [voting] districts instead of these rigged [voting] districts that disenfranchise the Black and brown," he continued in a rising voice.

The crowd began to applaud and did not stop until he shouted to the finish.

"We will not be silenced as they keep trying to introduce all these hate speeches. We will not be silenced, sisters and brothers, as we watch them break into the halls of public officials and brutally harm their family members. No, no, no! ... Your NAACP will not be silenced."

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U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) came as a member from another Black community facing similar concerns.

"I'm going to keep doing what I can to sound the alarm," said Jones, who got involved in politics in high school by joining the Spring Valley NAACP Youth Council. In these closing weeks of the midterm election, Jones said he's traveled to Florida, Texas, Georgia, Arizona now Ohio — wherever "the future of democracy" and "everything" the NAACP has achieved is "on the ballot Tuesday."

He said his brief time in Congress has pressed on him the importance of this election.

"I have to serve with these people," he said. "So I see. I see how they are. I see that they don't share our values, I see that they are hostile to who we are. And I also know that if John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to be bludgeoned to the point of unconsciousness to secure for us the Voting Rights Act of 1965, then the least we can do today is to use those rights which his generation secure for us, namely our votes and our voices."

A stirring tribute to Jayland Walker

Alexis "Xposyur" Boyd said she was rendered "speechless" by the June 27 shooting of Walker. A lifelong Akron resident and lyrical artist who helps others find words to express their feelings, she struggled.

In her struggle, she said she worked through the pain. On Sunday, she delivered the words she found in herself in a tribute to Walker.

She began with the opening lines of jazz singer Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit."

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit," Xposyur sang more than she said. "Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/ Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze/ Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees."

Then her tone cut flat. At a table near the entrance, Jayland Walker's mother, Pam, tilted her head at the ground with her hands resting in her lap. A woman beside her laid a comforting hand on her knee as the mourning mother rocked her head. Xposyur's sweet melody turned sour.

"Strange Fruit?" she questioned the crowd. "Looking like the same fruit? I mean ain't nothing changed fruit. Bodies rearranged fruit."

"Semi-automatic guns love chocolate," the artist said, referencing the more than 60 rounds fired by eight Akron officers in the fatal shooting of Walker.

Xposyur's performance reached back to the 1921 massacre of Black Wall Street in the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She cried that Trayvon Martin should not have died, that Breonna Taylor and Michael Brown should be in college, and that Adolf Hitler might as well be alive "the way they hittin' us."

To be Black in America, she said, is to be hopeful and hopeless. "It's the same song y'all. It's the same song we still singing. But I guess we should shut up right? Because at least we ain't hanging."

Reach reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron NAACP annual fundraiser honors heritage, resistance and service