Sign up for Meridian’s Free Newsletter, please CLICK HERE
The following is excerpted from the Deseret News. To read the full article, click here.
Two months after a joint press conference that signaled a historic new partnership between the NAACP and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the budding collaboration took a practical turn on Sunday night.
The two organizations plan to launch a joint education and employment initiative on the East Coast this fall, according to an announcement made at the 109th NAACP Annual Convention by Elder Jack N. Gerard, a General Authority Seventy and executive director of the Public Affairs Committee of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Our unified vision is not only equality of education and income,” Elder Gerard told the Deseret News, “but, perhaps more importantly, equality of influence.”
He made the announcement during the convention’s opening mass meeting at San Antonio’s Henry B. González Convention Center, where an LDS gospel choir earned a standing ovation, winning over many in a large crowd that included some who vocalized surprise and skepticism over the new partnership.
“It’s still a relationship that is developing and in progress,” Leon Russell, chairman of the NAACP national board of directors, told the Deseret News. “We believe we should be in communication and partnership with any faith group on the issues on which we have common ground, and we have common ground with the LDS on equality, human rights and civility in public spaces. In all of those places, we can work together.”
To read the full article, click here.