Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama delivered a speech at the 99th annual NAACP national convention in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 14, 2008.

Sen. Barack Obama paid tribute Monday to the black leadership in the civil rights battles of the ’60s and ’70s, but reminded members of the NAACP that those leaders “were not much older than many of you when they made their mark on history.”

“If I have the privilege of serving as your next president, 100 years after the founding of the NAACP, I will stand up for you the same way that earlier generations of Americans stood up for me — by fighting to ensure that every single one of us has the chance to make it if we try,” Obama said.

“That means removing the barriers of prejudice and misunderstanding that still exist in America. It means fighting to eliminate discrimination from every corner of our country. It means changing hearts and changing minds and making sure that every American is treated equally under the law.”

The Illinois senator’s speech was a historic first: an African-American poised to be the presidential nominee of a major party addressing the nation’s oldest civil rights organization.

Source: Obama’s focus is responsibility in NAACP speech

Obama reiterated his consistent theme of personal responsibility and addressed, without naming names, Rev. Jesse Jackson’s controversial remarks and disparaging response to that theme.

“Yes, we have to demand more responsibility from Washington. And yes, we have to demand more responsibility from Wall Street. But we also have to demand more from ourselves,” Obama told several thousand people attending the annual convention of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People. “Now, I know some say I’ve been too tough talking about responsibility. NAACP, I’m here to report, I’m not going to stop talking about it.”

He added: “No matter how much money we invest in our communities, how many 10-point plans we propose, how many government programs we launch — none of it will make a difference . . . if we . . . don’t seize more responsibility in our own lives.”

Obama repeated a call for black parents to be more involved in their children’s lives, but he stayed away from more pointed language, such as he used in a Father’s Day speech chastising black fathers who were “acting like boys instead of men.”

Such remarks irritated some of Obama’s backers, including some who were at the NAACP convention. Jesse L. Jackson suggested last week that was an example of the Democratic candidate “talking down to black people.”

On Monday, Obama also spoke of the importance of parents “teaching our daughters to never allow images on television to tell them what they are worth, teaching our sons to treat women with respect, and to realize that responsibility does not end at conception,” Obama said. “That what makes them men is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one — that’s a message we need to send.”

Source: Responsibility Is Again Theme for Obama

Sen. Barack Obama’s speech to the 99th NAACP National Convention didn’t just pack the auditorium at the Duke Energy Center, downtown Cincinnati at Fountain Square was jam-packed with people anxious to catch his address.

People stood elbow-to-elbow as the crowd spilled out to the sidewalks and filled the square.

One thousand people had RSVP’ed to attend the viewing at the big screen at the square but News 5 reporters said that easily twice that amount showed up.

People were greeted with a carnival-like atmosphere at the square.

Vendors sold everything from drinks to patriotic pins to Obama T-shirts.

Before the speech, the crowd was treated to a live band while they waited.

People said that the event had an electric feeling to it, that they buzz around the speech had a palpable buzz to it.

Source: Fountain Square Filled By Hundreds During Speech

See also:

• Text of Obama’s speech to NAACP

Photo credit: Photos 1-5 Scott Olson/Getty Images North America, Photo 6 Gary Landers/The Cincinnati Enquirer, Photo 7 Joseph Fuqua II/The Cincinnati Enquirer



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Video & Photos: Barack Obama Speech at 99th NAACP National Convention 7-14-08