MIAMI BEACH, Fla., July 14 (UPI) -- NAACP leaders used the group's annual convention to make sure programs they consider impediments to their longtime battle to secure equal education for African-Americans would be attacked.
The nation's most enduring civil rights organization won its first victory in 1954, nearly a half century ago, when the Supreme Court ruled separate but equal education should end. The school desegregation battle began soon thereafter including the controversy over busing.
There have been a few setbacks and a series of significant victories since then, including last month's Supreme Court ruling that colleges and universities may consider race when choosing their students.
The NAACP is still hailing that ruling at its convention this week in Miami Beach, and is using it to lash out at Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his older brother, the president.
The NAACP said the ruling was a victory despite a companion decision ruling out a numerical evaluation for enrolling freshmen that automatically awards some minorities 20 points on a 150-point admissions scale.
The organization's president, Kweisi Mfume, promised that the ruling allowing consideration of race would be enforced.
"We will litigate against colleges, universities and any other institutions of higher education who want to continue not to comply and find a way to continue to get around the law," Mfume said.
NCAAP Chairman Julian Bond said the court did what was right.
"The Supreme Court gave legal sanction to what we knew to be morally, socially and educationally correct," Bond said.
"We urge all the states which have abandoned race-conscious affirmative action to comeback into the Union," Bond said. "Governor Bush, are you listening? We will be heard."
Bush's One Florida Initiative replaced affirmative action type programs in 1998 with a percentage program that guarantees the top 20 percent of each high school graduating class admission to a school in the state university system.
Bush has contended that the number of African-American and Hispanic students in the university system has increased since the program began. Critics say that most of those increases were in predominantly black or Hispanic universities.
"There is little evidence, despite Governor Bush's premature pronouncements to the contrary that the Talented 20 Program has done anything to change the admissions prospects for Florida's public school students," Bond said.
"These percent plans, which guarantee admission to state universities for a fixed percentage of the state's top high school graduates, suffer from numerous deficiencies, not the least of which is that they depend for any success on racial segregation in high schools.
"In the process, they encourage students to remain in low-performing segregated schools and discourage them from taking challenging classes that might lower their grade point averages," Bond said.
Bond also used his criticism of Jeb Bush to get at President Bush.
"The Bush brothers are big on pre-emption," Bond said.
"First, Gov. Jeb Bush became the only governor to carryout a pre-emptive strike on affirmative action, and then President George Bush carried out a pre-emptive strike on Iraq, the only president in our nation's history to attack a country which did not threaten or attack us first. Both strikes were unnecessary and unwise," he said.
In addition to the affirmative action issue, the agenda also includes a vote on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Students are required to pass versions of the test to advance from third to fourth grade and to graduate from high school.
"Gov. Jeb Bush's notion of school reform is going to send black children to reform schools," Bond said. "His exit tests threaten to bar third-graders from advancing to fourth, high school seniors from graduation.
"Florida loses nearly half of its black and Hispanic students before they graduate," he said.
Neither Bush is attending the 94th annual NAACP convention, saying that schedule conflicts prevented them from joining the 12,000 delegates from across the nation.
Florida is being used as a target for the exit exams because of the location of the convention, but nearly half the states have started the assessment tests, or plan to in the next three years.
The education theme was also apparent during Monday's forum involving six people seeking the 2004 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Each of the candidates were asked about educational equity and they all responded with examples of votes they had cast and actions they had taken to help the education of minorities in the past.
But the bigger issue at the forum was who was there and who was not. Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo.; Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio; and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., were not in attendance.
Mfume ticked them off by name and admonished them for staying away.
He labeled them "persona non grata." Each time he mentioned one of their names an organ played a few notes from a funeral dirge.
"If you expect us to believe that you could not find 90 minutes to come by and address the issues affecting our nation, then you have no legitimacy over the next nine months in our community," Mfume said.
Democratic presidential candidates who attended and answered questions were former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, Bob Graham of Florida, John Kerry of Massachusetts and black activist the Rev. Al Sharpton.
