The NAACP’s LGBTQ+ acceptance has empowered the Black community

Reverend Dr. Amos C. Brown, San Francisco NAACP president, speaks at a press conference given by Bay Area religious leaders, following the day’s U.S. Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage – 26 June 2013
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Over 7,000 people attended the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) 114th National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts from July 26 to August 1. Along with the attendees, hundreds of local and national vendors showed up and showed out, and the convention’s theme, “Thriving Together,” allowed Boston to reintroduce itself, creating a milieu to celebrate and acknowledge Boston’s Black community and its collective entrepreneurial and political power.

But when the NAACP began its 73rd national convention in Boston 41 years ago in 1982, that same day, the news reported that an African American home had been firebombed after three Black families moved into the all-white enclave of Dorchester. That event, coupled with lingering residual animus derived from the Boston busing crisis of the 1970s, left a pox on Beantown, keeping not only the Convention away but also African Americans from visiting, giving the city its earned reputation as one of the most racist cities in the country.

Today, Boston presents itself ready to change — not to erase its past — but rather to present itself as a city now able to provide opportunities for people of color and uphold their civil and human rights without discrimination.

The NAACP Convention also came to Boston when the organization’s acceptance of its LGBTQ+ members is no longer an ongoing controversy. The NAACP was once as homophobic as…

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