Naacp Officials

Two days after it riled Baltimore by endorsing a National Football League franchise for rival Charlotte, N.C., the NAACP issued a new statement yesterday that neither apologized to Baltimore nor backed away from Charlotte."

The county NAACP president's charges of discrimination in Harford's school system brought a detailed rebuttal from Superintendent Ray R. Keech, who labeled the charges groundless.The superintendent issued a 12-page report after the president of the local NAACP chapter accused the school system of discriminating against minorities in hiring and promotions.Local NAACP officials said they would reserve comment on the report, released at the chapter's regular monthly meeting Thursday night, until the next meeting in September.

One man claimed to be divine."This is my church, these are my people," he roared during last night's NAACP's anti-crime summit at Mount Sinai Baptist Church.Someone shouted at him to respect the Lord's house."This is my [expletive] church," answered the divine one.When officials cut the volume on the man's microphone, he rushed toward the podium where the mayor and other city officials were seated. Plainclothes police officers and NAACP officials surrounded the man, pleading with him to behave.

Members of the local NAACP branch say county officials have responded inadequately to several recent racial incidents in the county, including the distribution of white supremacist literature, vandalism of a black church and an attack on a black student riding a school bus.At a news conference Saturday, Bowyer G. Freeman, president of thecounty NAACP chapter, called for aggressive prosecution of those involved in racist crimes and a public condemnation of...

The Howard County NAACP has criticized elected county officials for not speaking out against a recent spate of hate incidents in parts of Howard as diverse as the rural western end and the integrated suburb of Columbia.Bowyer G. Freeman, president of the county NAACP branch, said that County Executive Charles I. Ecker and the five County Council members need to send a strong message across the county that hate incidents will not be tolerated.Freeman cited recent activity by the Ku Klux Klan in the west county town of Lisbon, the distribution of 50 copies of a racist and anti-Semitic newspaper in central Columbia last month and the vandalism of a small black church in Lisbon in August.

The black director of a regional community assistance program has come to the defense of the Turf Valley Country Club, which he says has been the unfair target of a racial controversy being kept alive by the Howard County branch of the NAACP.The Rev. Roland Howard, director of the Regional Action Planning Program, said he is encouraging the NAACP to meet with Turf Valley owner Nicholas B. Mangione to settle their differences. The two sides have been at odds since a Turf Valley manager left racist remarks on the telephone answering machine of a local NAACP member in 1988.

ELKTON -- The recent distribution of pamphlets bearing the name of the Ku Klux Klan has alarmed Cecil County's black community and raised concerns about a possible resurgence of the hate-group that flourished here 30 years ago.While law enforcement officials have yet to arrest those responsible or determine if the Klan was, in fact, involved, residents fear the incidents will make it even harder to remove what they see as an unfair stigma of Cecil County...