Obama to Address NAACP in Philadelphia

Photo | Jeff Fusco

The NAACP announced Wednesday President Barack Obama will address the group’s annual conference, which is being held in Philadelphia later this month.

“We are honored to welcome President Obama back to our NAACP national convention,” NAACP Chairman Roslyn M. Brock said in a release. “Our members are looking forward to President Obama delivering a powerful message that reinforces our commitment to being champions for civil and human rights in the 21st century.”

Obama has addressed the NAACP once before, in 2009 in New York.

The NAACP’s annual convention is between July 11th and 15th this year. Obama will make his speech on the 14th.

Earlier this month, Obama delivered the eulogy at the funeral for the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, one the victims of the racially-motivated Charleston massacre. He spoke on race and civil rights in Selma, Alabama, in March.

“President Barack Obama, having spoken eloquently of grace to a grieving nation in a moment of crisis in Charleston,” NAACP president William Brooks said in a statement, “will now address the social and economic challenges of our time in the hometown of American freedom – Philadelphia.”

The Philadelphia branch of the NAACP was founded in 1912. Rodney Muhammad, president of the Philadelphia chapter, said in a release he expected the convention to “cause the entire Association to attack the social ills of poverty, racial profiling, police brutality, health disparities and income inequality, with more vigor than ever before.”