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Explore our coverage of government and politics.

Vermont's First NAACP Chapter Seeking Members

NAACP
Organizers of Vermont's new NAACP chapter believe the assistance and stature of the national organization will provide minorities with a greater voice.

Vermont has its first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The national organization was formed in 1909 and was instrumental in the civil rights movement.

Mary Brown-Guillory, president of the new chapter, says recent events provided the catalyst for a group of people to organize Champlain Area NAACP.

She isn’t talking about events that took place somewhere else. She says for people of color living in the Champlain Valley area, racial bias shows up in many ways in many places.

“Individuals are discriminated [against] in the Champlain area daily: By the local police department, discriminated against in stores,” says Brown-Guillory.

The organization has been taking shape for months, and now has about 170 members. It will hold a membership meeting next week.

Brown-Guillory  believes the assistance and stature of the national organization will provide minorities with a greater voice.

“When you go knock on a stranger’s door sometimes you’re just dismissed and not heard,” she says. “With us, they know that we care and we will use every tool that we can to make sure that every citizen is treated equally.”

Brown-Guillory says her mother was an NAACP chapter president in Louisiana.

Brown-Guillory spoke out last year when the Greater Burlington YMCA asked members of a basketball program to get drinking water from a shower instead of a drinking fountain. She said the request was an example of discrimination.

The Y said the fountain was broken but said asking people to drink water from the shower wasn’t the best idea.

The Champlain Area NAACP includes the Champlain Valley in Vermont and New York as well as neighboring Quebec.

The membership meeting will take place Tuesday, July 14 at 7 p.m. in the Waterman Building on the University of Vermont campus.

Steve has been with VPR since 1994, first serving as host of VPR’s public affairs program and then as a reporter, based in Central Vermont. Many VPR listeners recognize Steve for his special reports from Iran, providing a glimpse of this country that is usually hidden from the rest of the world. Prior to working with VPR, Steve served as program director for WNCS for 17 years, and also worked as news director for WCVR in Randolph. A graduate of Northern Arizona University, Steve also worked for stations in Phoenix and Tucson before moving to Vermont in 1972. Steve has been honored multiple times with national and regional Edward R. Murrow Awards for his VPR reporting, including a 2011 win for best documentary for his report, Afghanistan's Other War.
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