BY JANICE MORSE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON - This week's protests of racist messages at Miami University's Oxford campus signal that "another generation is stepping up to the plate," said the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant, 27, the national youth and college director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
While the students' protests are encouraging to the anti-racist cause, "It's disheartening to see that young people of 1998 have to deal with 1958 issues," the Rev. Bryant said Friday at a news conference at the Hamiltonian Hotel.
The protests (NOV. 11 STORY) were prompted by the discovery on Oct. 30 of fliers containing racist and anti-homosexual messages at the Center for Black Culture and Learning on campus. Also, screen-savers were changed on four computers to include racist messages, according to Miami's Department of Public Safety.
The Rev. Mr. Bryant was in town to address the 37th annual Freedom Fund Banquet of the Hamilton - Fairfield Branch of the NAACP. The event drew about 250 people, said Archie A. Johnson, NAACP branch president.
The Rev. Mr. Bryant was quick to point out that Miami University isn't alone in problems with racism, but he said it's troubling that students have reported such incidents there each of the past four years.
In the 1950s and '60s, civil rights activists fought visible enemies, such as signs that segregated blacks from whites. "Now you're dealing with young people who have to fight invisible enemies . . . so it's hard to galvanize over that which you cannot see."
He expects the national NAACP will become more involved in the Miami situation, and the Rev. Mr. Bryant said he intended to meet with several Miami students after Friday's banquet. The Rev. Mr. Bryant, who said he would return to Ohio if the students ask him to, suggests that Miami establish a student NAACP branch. There are now 147 student branches nationwide, he said, among more than 2,200 branches.
The Rev. Mr. Bryant, listed in Ebony magazine as one of America's future leaders, is associate minister of the 11,000-member Bethel A.M.E. Church in Baltimore.
He has launched a national "Stop the Violence, Start the Love" campaign. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta and holds a masters of divinity degree from Duke University in Durham, N.C.
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