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19 FEB HER
Local NAACP president fights for everyone’s rights, for future generations
Story by Cassidy Kendall, photography by Grace Brown
Most people, I think, come (to the NAACP) when they are actually in a crisis them- selves, and then they come and ask for
help, and when they get help you go ‘Oh OK, may- be I should be a part of this,’” says Linda Franklin, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Unit 6013.
“You know how they say if you’re not a part of the solution maybe you’re a part of the problem? So I want to be part of the solution to help make changes in our community, our schools, and our country, for that matter.”
Franklin has been an active member of the NAACP Unit 6013 since 2000, eventually taking on a leadership role as the unit’s secretary before becoming its president in 2009. She describes her participation within the unit as completing a “civic duty.”
According to the NAACP, the association’s mission is to secure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons. Its vision is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race.
“Sometimes we are asked to come in on a le- gal matter and we’re not lawyers, we don’t even have a lawyer, but we can actually sit down with somebody a lot of times and solve the problem,” Franklin said. “A lot of people say ‘What’s the NAACP and what are y’all out doing? The NAACP does nothing.’ But because of the fact that most of the things that we’re dealing with are private, we have to be confidential, and we can’t actually say ‘I just went there and solved this case, somebody had a problem on the job.’”
She said the problem could be in discrimina- tion, but it could also be in something like sexual harassment at the workplace.
“We just try to go in and talk with the people,” she said. “And the good thing about our city is we have a working relationship with the mayor, city director, chief of police and the sheriff. So if those matters come up we can sit down and solve them without a whole lot of litigation.”
Franklin said a lot of people call on the NAACP for help in issues other than racial discrimination, noting that a lot of people think of the NAACP as fighting for the rights of blacks only.
“They don’t know about the educational part; if you’re having problems with your kids in school,” she said. “We (also) get letters from people in jail cells saying ‘I’ve been unfairly treated,’ and a lot of times it comes from black people because I don’t think a lot of people know it’s for everybody.”
Franklin is on the long, mixed list of past NAACP presidents that consists of both men and women, as well as white and black, people.
Franklin said it is not even the slightest bit un- common for women to hold the role of president in any NAACP unit, or to lead in any area of the black community, for that matter.
“It is common for the NAACP to have women
in leadership roles. (In) most black organizations, even churches, when you go into them, the major- ity of the members are females,” she said. “Some- times you have to realize maybe (women) can lead; we don’t always have to be the followers.”
Franklin said she had never seen herself as a leader of any organization, prior to taking on her current role, but the NAACP has encouraged her in her leadership.
“I like to work and I like to work in the back- ground,” she said. “But when I was called forward I thought ‘Am I really for this? Will I be successful at it?’ And a lot of times I doubt myself and I get the encouragement from the unit to say ‘Yeah, you’re
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