Incoming NAACP Chairwoman Roslyn Brock Tuned Voice of Leadership at Virginia Union
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People elected Virginia Union University alumnus Roslyn Brock as the next chairwoman of the oldest civil rights advocacy group in the United States over the weekend. Brock, 44, is the youngest person to hold the position in the Association’s 101-year history.
And like many great civil rights leaders, her start began at a historically black college.
Roslyn Brock was trying to decide between running for president of the student government at Virginia Union University and pursuing another position at the historically black college in Richmond. She called home to Maryland for advice.
More than two decades later, her mother remembers the conversation.
“My comment to her was, ‘If someone came to the campus looking for a voice, would they ask an individual who’s chair of a particular group or ask for the SGA president?’ ” Eladies Sampson said this week. “I told her, ‘If you want to have a voice, that’s where you need to go.’ ”
Brock’s victory in the student government election gave her a voice that she has used ever since, both in her professional life as a health care administrator and longer – and more demonstratively – with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Over the weekend, the Baltimore-based organization elected Brock, a longtime member of its national board, its next chairwoman.
Personally, my hope for Brock and her leadership within the NAACP is a renewed focus on the concerns of youth and activism amongst high school and college-age students. While there is value in bringing attention to political, social and cultural injustice being inflicted on minorities around the country, the organization also should revitalize community-building precepts in school-aged children, being led by students in secondary schools and colleges.
Communities are severely deficient in moral standards, academic integrity and community pride. These values that were passed down from generations, but with desegregation and the commercialization of the Black community, have been watered down or washed away. Adults can’t revitalize these concepts; young people have to take up the mantle of responsibility and care for community and self.
If Brock, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and others hope to ensure a vibrant future for the organization, the messages they promote must be tailored and fitting for a younger audience. Charged up activism has run its course. It’s time for the Civil Rights Movement to revise its chapters of courage and faith with younger authors.
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