The NAACP elected a health care executive as its youngest board chairman Saturday, continuing a youth movement for the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. Roslyn M. Brock, 44, was chosen to succeed Julian Bond. She had been vice chairman since 2001 and a member of the NAACP for 25 years.
Brock works for Bon Secours Health Systems in Maryland as vice president for advocacy and government relations, and spent 10 years working on health issues for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She joins Benjamin Todd Jealous, the 37-year-old CEO of the NAACP, as leader of the 500,000-member organization.
Brock said she plans to focus on pushing for policy changes to eliminate inequality, strengthening the relationship between the national and local NAACP branches and holding people accountable.
“It’s not always what someone is doing to us, but what we are doing for ourselves,” Brock said in an interview.
The departure of Bond, 70, after 10 years as board chairman marks a turning point for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Pepole.
Bond came of age in the segregated South, helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and was on the front lines of the protests that led to the nation’s landmark civil rights laws. He is a symbol and icon of “the movement,” which was a defining experience for older generations.
