Interview, Fireside Chat
Cornell Brooks, NAACP CEO: Talks at GS Session Highlights
- Ronell Brooks is the 18th president of the NAACP and a fourth-generation minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the nation's oldest African American denomination founded in the late 1700s via social protest rather than theological schism.
- Brooks' grandfather ran for Congress in the late 1940s specifically to energize voters and the NAACP following the Supreme Court's Smith v. Allwright decision, which outlawed all-white Southern Democratic primaries.
- Brooks' path to ministry and law began after Stokely Carmichael challenged college students to read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the complete works of Martin Luther King Jr., exposing a gap in their knowledge.
- Brooks subsequently became a Martin Luther King scholar at Boston University and a civil rights lawyer at Yale Law School.
- Brooks notes that despite the presidency of a Black man, the NAACP's relevance has been underscored by a surge in police killings and civil unrest, including the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown (Ferguson), Tamir Rice, and the Charleston Nine.
- The organization faces a critical political landscape defined by the 50th anniversaries of the Voting Rights Act and the Selma to Montgomery March, occurring alongside the weakening of voting protections post-Shelby v. Holder.
- Brooks led 1,004 miles of marches from Selma to Washington D.C. and 134 miles across Missouri to advocate for criminal justice reform and voting rights.
- The NAACP operates 2,000 branches with no paid staff outside of Baltimore and Washington D.C., relying entirely on hundreds of thousands of volunteers across diverse demographics, including high school and college students.
- Brooks identifies the lack of full Voting Rights Act protection in the 2016 federal election as a primary concern, citing disenfranchisement tactics that target young voters via ID laws.
- The NAACP's top agenda item is establishing an affirmative right to vote under the Constitution, rather than merely blocking prohibitions, to broaden coalitions across race, age, and ability lines.
- Brooks emphasizes the need for deeper analytical capacity and social media outreach to defend the rights of African Americans, Latinos, seniors, and people with disabilities.