Carla Clark | For The Republic Johnnie Edwards, at left, Tom Harmon accepting the NAACP Distinguished Service Award on behalf of Mary Harmon, and Sadi Harper-Scott during the 2023 annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Remembrance and Awards Gala hosted by the Columbus/Bartholomew County Area Branch of the NAACP at Mill Race Center in Columbus, Ind., Saturday, January 28, 2023.
The keynote speaker at the annual Columbus/Bartholomew County Branch of the NAACP meeting and dinner Saturday said that leaders must help young people find better paths to academic and overall achievement, given poor performance results on many standardized tests in recent years.
He said he doubted that national NAACP founders would be pleased with many of those scores. But he added that people must persevere to help the younger generation succeed.
“Too many people have marched, too many people have taken bullets, for us to stop now,” said Dennis Bland.
He is president of the Center for Leadership Development, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit empowering Black youth for academic and career success.
He spoke at the NAACP’s Martin Luther King Jr. Remembrance and Awards Gala before an audience at Columbus’ Mill Race Center of 163 people — one of the stronger turnouts since Columbus native and former Indianapolis television reporter Kyle Inskeep was the keynote speaker in 2017 and attracted 374 people.
“We definitely are ecstatic about the turnout and all the overall support,” Edwards said after the gathering. “We are very excited about that.”
Sponsors for the evening included IUPUC and the African American Fund of Bartholomew County.
Just like former chapter president Olisa Humes, Edwards has focused on building and broadening the chapter’s membership and also event attendance since he assumed the organization’s leadership post in June 2020.
Edwards’ remarks at the event focused on the event’s Rev. Martin Luther King-inspired theme: “I Am the Dream.” He used a bicycle analogy to guide one of his comments.
“These young people are the dream,” Edwards said, “and we have to change our way of thinking, our traditions and our thought processes to help them reach the pedals of change.
“Fortunately, we live in a community that is open to having conversations about violence, racial injustice, and racism. We have a lot of work to do, but this community is up to the challenge.”
Bland cited four tenets, including the aforementioned learning, to help young people succeed. He listed the other three as: leadership, love and legacy. He called love “something valuable offered to someone else so that others can be elevated.”
NAACP Awards
- Most outstanding businesses: Centra Credit Union and Stylez by Nette
- Most outstanding student: Marieme Niang
- Most outstanding athlete: Kayla Jones
- Distinguished service awards: Cummins (CARE) and Mary Harmon
- Excellence in diversity: Jon Padfield, and United Way of Bartholomew County
— Columbus magazine writer Glenda Winders contributed to this report.
