I. Introduction
"The NAACP
has always been nonpartisan, but that doesn't mean we're noncritical.
For as long as we've existed, whether Democrats of Republicans have
occupied the White House, we've spoken truth to power."[1] With these
words, Chairman Julian Bond, head of the National Organization for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), began the keynote address of the
organization's 95th annual convention in Philadelphia in July of 2004.
He went on: "We must guarantee the irregularities, suppression,
nullification and outright theft of black votes that happened on
election day 2000 never, ever happen again . . . You cannot win this
race by ignoring race . . . We know that if whiles and nonwhites vote
in the same percentages as they did in 2000, Bush will be re-defeated
by 3 million votes."[2]
Soon after this speech was made, and its contents made publicly
available on the official website for