BOSTON -- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, in an enthusiastically received speech, today told the NAACP's national convention that blacks face the 'most anti-civil rights administration' in modern times and accused President Reagan of catering to the rich.
The Massachusetts Democrat, considered a leading candidate for his party's presidential nomination in 1984, called on the nation's oldest civil rights group to join with Democrats in ousting Reagan. He was interrupted by applause more than two dozen times.
'We will wage the same fight for racial justice on avery front against the most anti-civil rights administration in the modern history of this land,' Kennedy said.
Kennedy, who received a standing ovation at the beginning and end of his speech, castigated the Reagan administration for its economic, social and foreign policies.
At the conclusion of his address, he joined hands with NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks, Chairwoman Margaret Bush Wilson and others to sing civil rights anthem, 'We Shall Overcome.' Kennedy's son, Patrick, was also on the podium.
He received a thunderous ovation when he referred to the administration's distribution of surplus cheese to state welfare programs.
'The Reagan cheese lines of 1982 are as unacceptable as the Hoover bread lines of 1932,' Kennedy said.
'The administration claims to have a social safety net, but in fact the only social safety net now in place is the one that protects the special privileges of the very wealthy,' he said.
'I reject their cruel and unfair theory of government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich,' he said.
Kennedy said the Reagan administration claims it cares about the poor. 'And you know, there is one piece of evidance for that. This administration must love poor people, because it is creating so many more of them,' he said.
The NAACP opened its week-long convention Sunday with a pledge to mobilize black voters against Reagan and send him back to the 'purple hills of California.'
'Presidents are not forever,' NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks told the opening session.
'The NAACP was in business before Mr. Reagan came in office and we will be here when he leaves. We will help him all we can to leave office as quickly as possible,' he said.
Hooks said the NAACP hoped to end 'the national backsliding on civil rights' and the Reagan budget cuts by marshalling the politicial muscle of its 450,000 members.
He said the more than 3,000 delegates at the convention are concentrating on developing strategy to create jobs, increase black voter registration and boost NAACP participation, Hooks said.
Security was tight for the convention and police patrols were increased, said Police Deputy Superintendent Paul Johnson.
Leon T. Nelson, security director for the NAACP, said because of the city's reputation for racial unrest that delegates are 'a bit more concerned about the climate here.'
'We're on alert, but we're not anticipating anything untoward,' Nelson said.
Hooks said holding the convention in Boston -- scene of bitter strife in the 1970s over school busing and recent incidents such as the firebombing of a building housing three black families in a predominantly white neighborhood -- will allow 'us an opportunity to focus on the crisis of racism and economic deprivation of minorities.'
Calling 1982 'the year of the ballot box,' he said 105 congressional districts have been targeted where blacks have more than 15 percent of the vote and 25 districts where blacks have more than 20 percent.
'Wherever the Moral Majority has a hit list, you can be sure we will be on the other side,' he said.
In an article published in the Boston Herald American to coincide with the opening of the convention, Hooks said despite civil rights progess 'these are the worst of times for many black Americans in recent years.'
He accused the current administration of creating a 'dismally conservative and anti-social climate,' for minorities, the poor -- and the white middle class in the country.
'The Reagan administration mirrors a growing mood in the country, a mood which is at once hard-hearted and increasingly resentful, if not hostile, towards the needy,' Hooks said.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale is scheduled to address the convention Thursday.
Other speakers on the schedule are: Georgia state Sen. Julian Bond, social activist Dick Gregory and Oumarou G. Youssoufou, United Nations ambassador of the Organization of African Unity.
