The Greater Terre Haute NAACP Branch is celebrating 100 years of organization in this community.
Members and friends are invited to join the historical event. The people who contributed to this organization and its mission during its first 100 years will be recognized. Highlights of the evening will include a buffet dinner, fellowship with freedom activists, and a memorable roll call to recognize those who worked from 1918 to 2018 on behalf of this Branch as volunteers, life members, and contributors toward the NAACP mission.
“Lest We Forget…” remarked A.Theressa Bynum, former Branch President and a member of the Freedom Fund Committee. “There have been so many people working tirelessly to make things happen and they deserve to be remembered,” Bynum continued. “The contributions varied from leadership to fundraising, recordkeeping to protesting/petitioning, or soliciting memberships, or getting out the vote and working the polls, changing discriminatory practices in employment, education, public access.”
The celebratory program and dinner will be held Saturday, November 17, 2018, from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the Meadows MCL Banquet Center. Tickets are $50.00 per person. The deadline for reservations is Friday, November 9 by contacting the NAACP at 812 230 2889 or 812 878 9397.
Freedom Fund committee chair, John E. Lang said he is pleased by the response of the community planning to participate in this important event. “We expect representation from members, churches, fraternal groups, and some corporations, as well as individuals who believe in freedom and equality,” Lang added.
Extraordinary research by ISU Lecturer Dr. Crystal Reynolds, Ph.D. has aided the Branch in its efforts to document the century-long journey. Reynolds’ work, an interpretive history of the Terre Haute NAACP (1918-2018), will provide much of the basic historic information that will be shared during the 2018 Freedom Fund Banquet program. The “Wall of Presidents” will identify the men and women who led the Branch as presidents during the ten decades beginning in 1918.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909 to work for full equality for Negro Americans, seeking to end racial segregation and other forms of discrimination in all public aspects of community life. The Terre Haute Branch was organized in 1918, when the local racial situation was very similar to conditions prevailing in the South. Bynum points out, “the history of the Greater Terre Haute NAACP Branch – the accomplishments of the people – is part of the history of Terre Haute and the Wabash Valley.”