Interim Executive Director

Dr. Francys Johnson

Greetings Comrades:

As a child, I remember reading the word's of Frederick Douglass: "There is no progress without struggle." That immortal wisdom came from the yearning soul of a man desperate to see the masses of Africans in America rise to a level of social consciousness and collective action about their shameful treatment at the hands of America.

Today, I am fortunate as the former Southeast Regional Director and now Interim Executive Director for the Georgia State Conference to take up the baton of leadership and the responsibility to "agitate, agitate agitate" in America's largest body of socially conscious citizens. We are fighting to make real the promises of this Republic. Please trust that if there is to be progress; it will be at the cost of a few who dared to endure the bitter struggle.

Therefore we must recruit, train, deploy and even redeploy a new vanguard that will press Georgia to deal with the complex issues of race, equity and power. Of course, the solutions are not readily apparent nor easily implemented. Nevertheless, failure is not an option.

My predecessors understood their role as a direct charge from our Constitution: "to make this (America) a more perfect Union." I pray for strength to honor the founding and sustaining traditions of the NAACP while managing the Association's agenda in Georgia.

We must press towards applying new strategies to combat the timeless struggle over the concept of race. Any successful effort must focus on coalition building across a broader base then what is currently represented among civil rights leadership.

I continue to believe that the greatness of America is not in her failures but in her persistent pursuit of that noble aim: "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

My God continue to sustain us in this struggle!