NAACP Youth Council celebrates one year in Sebastian County

There has been progress in 40 years.

There is always a ways to go, and the work should start at an early age, an educator and youth advocate for the Sebastian County NAACP said.

Laurie Wright moved to Fort Smith from Texas four decades ago. She has taught literacy at Howard Elementary School. She is the youth minister at her church.

She has taught a lot of children. To her it is all about the children, she said.

The Sebastian County NAACP Youth Council was formed on Jan. 28, 2022. The first anniversary is noon Saturday, Jan. 28 at Mount Zion CME Church, 910 N. 7, said Olan James, Sebastian County NAACP chapter president.

.James said since the 2020 death of George Floyd in Minnesota, there has been a resurgence of the local NAACP. More young Black people want to join, he said.

"We noticed particularly nationwide, but also even locally that there were more young people getting involved in civil rights and wanting to participate and protest and to make their voices heard and getting involved in the electoral process and vote and that kind of thing," James said.

Then a local death by gun violence inspired James to do more for youth in the community, he said. Jeremiah Tabut, 19, was shot and killed in December 2021. His death was a catalyst to start the local NAACP youth chapter, James said.Tabut was a Future School of Fort Smith basketball player. He also played cornerback for Northside High School.

"It (Tabut's death) was instrumental to me to get the youth council up and running," James said.

There are now 27 youth ages 5 to 21 in the Sebastian County youth council. About 100 adults are NAACP members in the county, where about 9% of the population is Black.

NAACP in Sebastian County was active in the 1960s and 1970s, then restarted about a decade ago.

A lot happened in the first year for the youth members, James said.

The members have helped deliver food to low-income people participating with the Fort Smith police in a year of increasing food insecurity. On a field trip to Fayetteville, they saw Confederate monuments and talked about the past.

In late January, 2022, James said people from the community came to the first meeting wanting to join the youth council. Monthly meetings followed. The second meeting was in February, Black History Month.

"We started out talking about the purpose of Black history and the importance of knowing one's history, so we started from there," James said. "Every single month we started adding things, we did a community service project then we went to a sack lunch program and helped distribute sack lunches to food insecure residents here in Sebastian County."

On the fourth Saturday of each month, youth meet at noon and the adults meet at 2 p.m. at at Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church, 4503 Young Street.

They also took a field trip last summer to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to see a hip-hop exhibit called "The Dirty South." They took a tour of UA in Fayetteville with the Upward Bound program that fosters minority students.

There was a time people of color were not allowed to attend the state's largest university, James said.

The University Arkansas has a Black chancellor today, Charles Robinson.

"We're seeing the fruits of that labor now in the things that are happening in our community, that's all a result of people who were when they were their age actually getting involved in sit-ins and that kind of thing," James. We were educating them about the results of people who did things in the past that gives them the opportunity to them now."

Wright has been involved in work to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. in Fort Smith since moving from Texas. She has seen the student population of Howard Elementary that has been predominantly Black change in recent years. More Asians and Hispanics are in the school's current makeup and dynamics, she said.

"My motto as a teacher has always been 'it's all about the children.' But we as adults have to teach the children the right way and the appropriate way to deal with anything," Wright said.

The NAACP will continue to help youth with college scholarships, James said. Applications for students will be available by March.

The next meeting Jan. 28 is open to the public and everyone is invited to attend whether they want to join or not, James said.

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: NAACP Youth Council established a year ago in Sebastian County, Ark.