At an NAACP youth town hall Friday night, a LeMoyne-Owen College student pointed out an irony: As far as he could tell, he was the only LOC student in the room.
Other students were probably strolling around on campus as he spoke. They might have considered getting involved if they had known about something to get involved with — they were just unaware of what was happening inside.
“How could we get that outreach,” the student asked, “to other people that are not knowing but do want to make a change?”
The young NAACP leaders inside the room had been wrestling all evening with that essential question.
The Youth/College Community Town Hall, part of the Tennessee State Conference NAACP’s 80th annual Leadership & Civil Rights Convention, featured a panel called “More Than a Membership” that brought together young NAACP leaders to examine voting, advocacy, leadership and how to get more of their peers involved.
The emphasis on voting comes as the national NAACP mounts a $20 million campaign that its leaders say is designed to mobilize 6.5 million Black voters in 14 states and 33 congressional districts.
Town hall panelists included: Saniyah Collier, president of the Middle Tennessee State University chapter, Jonathan Baker of the Memphis Youth Council, and Jeremyah “Doc” McGill, president of the Jackson-Madison County Youth Council and vice president for the Tennessee State Conference Youth & College Division for West Tennessee. Ebony Lee of Lane College moderated.
For Baker, involvement in the NAACP has meant finding a voice he didn’t always know he had.
“As you might be able to see, I can do a lot of open speaking,” Baker said, referring to public speaking. “I was never able to do that a long time ago.”
He described his younger self as timid, more likely to stay in his room playing video games than stand before a crowd. But now?
“I can speak in front of a bunch of people,” he said.
Before joining the NAACP at MTSU, Collier said she had never held an executive board position. When she heard the campus chapter was being reactivated, she went to a meeting. When nominations for president opened, she raised her hand. She won.
“I don’t know why they voted for me,” Collier joked.
“I learned more than just a position in the NAACP,” she said. “I grew as a woman.”
‘We are the next now generation’
The evening’s agenda carried a special statement: “We are the next now generation.” The word ‘next’ was deliberately crossed out to convey that this generation is done waiting and they’re also challenging their peers to step up.
The room was packed with nearly 150 people in the lecture hall, where every seat was occupied, leaving latecomers standing. Most of the young people were seated toward the front, while many of the older adults attending the convention sat farther back. For that hour, the young people and their opinions were front and center.
A younger participant asked the panel what it meant to be a youth council president.
It means inspiring “the generation of now,” McGill said, and letting them know “that they have power, that their voice matters, that this world is good with them in it.”
Getting them in the room
Finding your own voice is one thing. Getting other young people into the room is another. And panelists made no pretense about mastering that part.
Baker recalled meetings where only a few people showed up. Collier talked about organizing MTSU events where sometimes the executive board seemed to be the only audience.
“It definitely was heartbreaking,” she said.
For these young leaders, part of fixing the participation problem means meeting their generation where it already stands.
Collier described welcome mixers featuring “dirty soda” bars, movie nights and events aimed at fraternities and sororities with names like “Party at the Polls” and “Stroll to the Polls.”
“Do the important stuff first,” she said. “Then have fun.”
Baker talked about registering voters while tailgating at the Southern Heritage Classic. He also suggested adapting Jackson State University’s popular “hotspot” gatherings for civic engagement, which would mean hiring a DJ and creating an atmosphere that would attract young people, then stopping the music periodically to talk about voting and voter registration.
Other suggestions included barbershop-style conversations and digital platforms. Collier said reaching young people sometimes requires thinking differently about where they get information in the first place.
“When I was younger, my grandma always had the news on,” she said. “Every single day.”
Today, she said, young people have endless entertainment choices competing for their attention.
“So maybe you have to reach them on their level,” she said. “Maybe through TikTok.”
She also wondered why civic participation itself couldn’t become part of youth culture.
“Why isn’t voting more of a trend?” Collier asked.
Young people will line up for the newest Jordans or a Stanley tumbler, she said. She wondered why so many young people fail to bring some of that same urgency to voting?
And simply paying dues doesn’t count as engagement.
“I’m real big on being a member versus being a member on the roster,” Collier said. “Why join a community where we’re all here for one thing just for you to pay your $10 and leave?
“Come here, advocate, be a voice,” she said. “Because even though I’m the president and I am the face of MTSU, when there’s more of us, it’s way louder than just me.”
‘Politics will do you’
Voting occupied a substantial part of the evening, but the panelists also tried to translate politics into the language of everyday life. Still, McGill often hears a familiar objection.
“Some people my age say they don’t do politics,” he said. “I always tell them, ‘If you don’t do politics, politics will do you.’”
McGill encouraged young voters to research candidates and determine for themselves who best reflects their goals, beliefs and values.
Collier offered an analogy tailored for college students. Before choosing a class, she said, students routinely go online to Rate My Professors to see what other students have said about an instructor. So, why would college students research a professor but not a political candidate seeking the power to make decisions affecting their lives?
“Do your research,” Collier said, “and see which one fits better for you.”
McGill said the conversation should focus on money. Show young people how public decisions can affect their education, student loans, paychecks and household finances.
“When you show people where it hurts most,” he said, “they realize maybe it’s time to get out, register to vote and make a change.”
“Not making a change is not an option,” McGill continued.
But panelists also said civic engagement doesn’t begin or end at the ballot box.
McGill urged young people to attend community meetings, volunteer, network and get to know the people making decisions in their communities, regardless of the organizers’ years of experience or age. He urged young people to walk into those rooms, make themselves known and expect to be taken seriously.
“I ain’t never scared,” McGill said. “Command the room.”
When advocacy gets real
Near the end of the town hall, the conversation took a heavier turn.
Charles Wesley, a junior religion major at Lane College, stood to ask a question about Nolan Wells, the 18-year-old Black Mississippi teen whose body was found in July after a boating trip with other male teens to Horn Island.
Days before the town hall, a Jackson County, Mississippi, grand jury declined to bring criminal charges in Wells’ death. Authorities have said evidence reviewed by the grand jury did not establish criminal wrongdoing. The state medical examiner and an independent pathologist both left the cause and manner of death undetermined. Wells’ family and civil rights attorney Ben Crump continue to call for further investigation.
“There has been a pit in my stomach since finding out there will be no criminal charges for the death of Nolan Wells,” Wesley said. “As Black folks in America, Lord knows, we live with a rage that isn’t necessarily provoked. It simply is. And I feel that rage upon finding out that news.”
Dominik Whitehead, the NAACP’s chief of field, membership growth and unit sustainability, picked up Wesley’s question after the panel. Whitehead said the NAACP Office of General Counsel is working with attorney Ben Crump’s team on the Wells case. But he also connected Wesley’s question to the importance of local elections, which the young panelists had been talking about all evening.
“I oftentimes tell people local elections impact us more than anything else,” Whitehead said. “Folks (have) got to engage and get out to vote.”
‘It starts with you’
The lone LeMoyne-Owen student in the room wanted to know how the NAACP could reach more young people like him, including his schoolmates.
Taylor Boyd, president of the Tennessee State Conference Youth & College Division, announced that efforts were already underway to re-establish an NAACP chapter at LeMoyne-Owen.
“Surprise, surprise, LOC will have a chapter coming soon,” Boyd said.
Still, she acknowledged that getting the word out to young people remained a challenge. But she also noted that Friday’s gathering represented progress. It was, she said, the largest youth turnout at a state convention in some time.
But Collier turned the student’s question around.
“The first thing I’m gonna say is, did you tell your friends about it?”
“No,” he answered.
“That’s not good enough right there,” Collier said. “Because it starts with you. It could have started with you.
“You could have told your friends, and you don’t know who your friends are going to tell. That’s networking right there. So it has to start from you,” she said.
Baker urged the group to expand outreach beyond friends. Walk up and greet other students. Tell them what’s happening. Give them sign-up information. Point them toward social media.
He had done the same thing recruiting students for another organization on his campus.
“Once you tell one person, they could tell five, 15, and those 15 could turn 30, 45,” Baker said. “So just not only within your friend group, but even people that you just meet on a daily basis.”
Then Collier returned to the same question one final time.
“Why don’t you be the trendsetter at your school?” she asked. “Make it a trend for people at your school. Just keep telling your friends. Advocate for the NAACP. Advocate for this.”
