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NAACP's new head: We
need diversity
By Frederick Melo
[email protected]
Updated: 01/16/2011 10:37:01 PM CST
Jeffry Martin wants to grow the ranks of the St. Paul
chapter of the NAACP.
Martin, a criminal defense attorney, former
probation officer and ordained minister who
replaced Nathaniel Khaliq as chapter president in
late December, is reaching back to the origins of the
national organization in 1909. Then, writer-orator
W.E.B. DuBois and journalist Ida B. Wells met with
some 60 concerned activists following a race riot in
Springfield, Ill. Seven of those at the gathering were
black. The rest were white, many of them the
descendants of abolitionists.
As a result, the first few presidents of what became
known as the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People were white and
largely Jewish until the association elected its first
black president in 1975.
That often-overlooked bit of history raises
questions in Martin's mind: Other organizations
have boosted membership, visibility and revenue by
looking outside the narrow lines of their core
constituency. Why not the St. Paul chapter of the
NAACP? Why not find a way to get more non-blacks
involved?
The groundwork already has been laid, he said.
"That's one thing I think Nick Khaliq has done real
well. He's got a broad base of alliances," said
Martin, 43, over coffee at Golden Thyme Coffee and
Café on Selby Avenue. "I want to continue that
tradition of not limiting who we reach out to."
The St. Paul chapter has about 350 members today
— a third of its peak membership in the civil rights
era
— and is grayer than it's ever been. That's a problem
both for Martin and the future of the organization,
locally and nationally. "I think the membership
numbers are down not only because of the
economic situations of people ... but the younger
generation thinks that it's this," he says, pointing to
a black-and-white picture of civil rights-era
protesters in coats and ties, fedoras and large-rim
glasses, picketing outside a St. Paul Woolworth
store. The year is 1960.
But diversify the NAACP? That's a bold goal for the
22nd president of one of the country's oldest
chapters. But a "major membership drive" of some
sort is just one of several bullet points on Martin's
long-term agenda, which is quickly stacking up with
projects.
The chapter he has inherited is knee-deep in a
federal lawsuit against the Metropolitan Council, the
metro's regional planning agency, over the 11-mile
Central Corridor light rail transit line being
constructed between downtown Minneapolis and
downtown St. Paul. Discussions about the line,
which will run along University Avenue, have been
contentious from the beginning because of the
potential impact on the largely minority
neighborhoods along the route.
Then there's the infamous "achievement gap"
between minority students and their white peers in
the St. Paul Public Schools. For years, minorities, on
average, have posted lower scores on statewide
exams and remained less likely to graduate from
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high school.
Martin has no surefire solution to close the gap, but
he has a message for his membership. "For those
who are blessed and have a lot of resources, help
pick them up," Martin said. "Hey, if you're good at
math, help tutor this kid."
The areas where Martin has the most experience are
in the fields of law and community corrections,
where he's held a round robin of jobs in St. Paul.
Martin moved to the Twin Cities from the Chicago
area in 1991 to work at the Wilder Foundation's
defunct Day Reporting Center, an alternative to
incarceration for adult offenders.
From 1992 to 1994, he worked for Boys Totem
Town, a correctional facility for teen boys on St.
Paul's East Side, then spent the next decade as an
adult probation officer for Ramsey County.
While working for Ramsey County Community
Corrections, he advocated that higher-ups add more
minorities to hiring committees throughout the
corrections system. "The number of people you were
serving, the clients, were increasingly people of
color," he said. The officers were "were totally white
males. Very few females."
He sought out the NAACP's help and got to know
Khaliq. Eventually, they began to see improvements
in minority hiring.
The experience of working with Martin left an
impression on Khaliq, who was looking to cultivate
a successor. "He wanted me to consider becoming
more and more involved," Martin said.
Martin kept busy in other ways, too. He got his law
degree taking night classes at the William Mitchell
College of Law. From 2004 to 2005, he was with the
Neighborhood Justice Center, a community law
office in St. Paul that primarily handles criminal
defense work for low-income clients.
He then became a public prosecutor for the city of
St. Paul, working under then-City Attorney John
Choi, and, from 2007 to 2009, served as a public
defender for Ramsey County. (Choi recently was
sworn in as the Ramsey County attorney.)
He since has opened the Martin Law Office, which
until this month was housed in the Neighborhood
Justice Center on Laurel Avenue. He's now left that
site and gone "virtual," working from a home office.
"I never (met) people there," he said, during his
interview. "I meet them here, at their homes, court,
jail, at their jobs sometimes."
Three days a week, he puts on a career counseling
hat and works with William Mitchell law students as
an assistant director of professional development.
About four years ago, Martin became involved in the
NAACP's legal redress committee, which he chaired
in 2008. The committee has sometimes helped the
St. Paul Police Department with cases by contacting
witnesses. At other times, it has advocated for
citizens who have complaints against the police.
His agenda includes plans to meet with the police
department and the city attorney's office over
agreements crafted in the early 1990s to improve
minority hiring and relations with the community.
One of the chief trends the NAACP noticed at the
time was the disproportionate number of black men
charged with obstructing the legal process.
Instead of pursuing formal court trials, the police
began engaging in sit-down mediations with
offenders, and the numbers of sentencings
dropped. Martin hopes to re-examine the issue to
see if it's still a concern.
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Established in 1913 — just four years after the
national group emerged from that initial meeting in
Illinois — the all-volunteer St. Paul chapter has at
times been considered one of the more active
groups, often due to the visibility of a few key
leaders like Khaliq. Civil-rights activist Roy Wilkins,
the chapter's fifth president, went on to lead the
national organization as its executive director in
1955.
Martin doesn't have a specific plan for how he'd like
to broaden membership in the St. Paul chapter, a tall
order at a time when the association's membership
has declined nationally. He knows some have
questioned the relevance of the civil rights group in
the modern era, and those critics include many
younger, recession-weary African Americans whose
everyday concerns are far removed from the
segregated lunch counters of their grandparents'
generation.
Older black activists, in turn, throw up their hands
at the vagaries of those born with the right to vote,
who often don't.
Runney Patterson, the president of the St. Paul Black
Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, said too
many young blacks take for granted the sacrifices of
black activists and civil rights leaders such as
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
"I think ... we're going to have to do a better job of
educating the younger generation to the work of the
NAACP," said Patterson, who is based out of the New
Hope Baptist Church on St. Paul's East Side.
"Sometimes, they think these opportunities always
existed, but they did not," Patterson said.
Martin agrees.
"We need to get the 18-to-40 year-olds back
involved, the post-high school through college-age
and young adults back involved," Martin said. "I
think the younger people are saying, 'I can't make a
difference' or 'They can't do anything for me. I'm
trying to get a job today.' "
Somehow, the St. Paul chapter has managed to avoid
many of the negative headlines that have dogged its
sister chapter in Minneapolis, which has been beset
over the years by internal power struggles. In 2003,
the Minneapolis chapter had three presidents in less
than a year.
In St. Paul, Martin knows he has his work cut out for
him, especially during a recession. But he brings
some skills to the table, including his roots, which
are small town and working class. He's known
hardship and learned not to scoff at opportunity.
"I was blessed," he said. "I grew up with two working
parents."
His parents met while working in the laundry of a
state psychiatric institution in Kankakee, Ill., about 5
0 miles south of Chicago. His mother died in
1979, when he was 12. His father, now 80, worked
security for the state of the Illinois for a time and
retired recently at an edible oil company, where he
checked in trucks.
Martin also has his faith. He met his wife, Josephine,
at the Progressive Baptist Church in St. Paul, where
he became an ordained minister in December 2009. J
osephine holds a doctorate, has done drug
research for Medtronic and is a safety specialist for
the company, overseeing medical devices. They
have a 14-year-old son, Jeremy, and a 9-year-old
daughter, Jada.
Martin is now pursuing a degree in Community
Ministry Leadership through Bethel Seminary, where
he is in his second year of classes.
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Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172.
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