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117 years on, the NAACP’s fight has broadened to include data centers, DACA, and Trump’s Department of Homeland Security.<\/span>Richard Baker\/In Pictures\/Corbis\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the summer of 1956, <\/span>Martin Luther King, Jr. took the stage at the NAACP\u2019s 47th annual convention<\/a> in San Francisco. Speaking at the precipice of the Civil Rights Movement, King cautioned that \u201cthe guardians of the status quo are always on hand with their oxygen tents to keep the old order alive.\u201d Over the next decade, Black Americans\u2019 struggle for racial justice would lead to major victories from the workplace to the ballot box. But today, as King warned, the \u201cold order\u201d clings on, and the civil rights gains fought for in the \u201960s are under siege<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since last January, the Trump administration has dismantled diversity, equity, and inclusion<\/a> programs and shuttered civil rights offices across the federal government; rejected the legal framework<\/a> used to protect marginalized groups\u2019 access to jobs, housing, and education. Last month, Donald Trump even told the New York Times<\/em><\/a> that he thought civil rights amounted to \u201creverse discrimination\u201d against white people.<\/p>\n A year into Trump\u2019s second term, and with months to go until the midterm elections, I spoke with NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson<\/a> about Trump\u2019s multifront attack on civil rights protections, federal agents\u2019 violent invasion<\/a> of Minneapolis, resistance to data centers in Black communities across the South, and the role of the nation\u2019s oldest civil rights organization in this political moment.<\/p>\n Days before we spoke, an ICE officer shot and killed Ren\u00e9e Good in South Minneapolis, just blocks away<\/a> from where George Floyd was murdered by police in 2020. Johnson, who has presided over the NAACP since 2017, called ICE\u2019s intimidation and harassment of citizens and non-citizens alike, due process violations<\/a>, and use of racial profiling (greenlighted by the Supreme Court<\/a>) \u201csomething that we have not seen at this level in this country for many, many decades, if ever.\u201d<\/p>\n In July, the NAACP threatened to sue xAI for its use of polluting methane turbines to power its data centers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The NAACP of the 1950s and \u201960s\u2014after leading the charge against segregation in the 1954 landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education<\/em><\/a>\u2014paired its winning legal strategy with support for nonviolent direct action. The year after Brown<\/em> overturned the doctrine of \u201cseparate but equal,\u201d the NAACP provided legal aid to Black Alabamians boycotting segregated buses<\/a> in Montgomery, and years later, to students protesting discrimination at lunch counters<\/a> across the South. It even played a pivotal role in planning the 1963 March on Washington<\/a>. But in the next decade, during the more militant Black Power movement, and into the Reagan years, the organization struggled with the departure of its longtime executive director Roy Wilkins<\/a>, declining youth membership, and financial challenges.<\/p>\n At the start of the 21st century, the NAACP focused on less confrontational strategies until the emergence of Black Lives Matter<\/a> in the 2010s\u2014and Trump\u2019s election\u2014threw the organization into a new period of uncertainty. Promising a \u201csystemwide refresh,\u201d it dismissed its 18th president<\/a> in May of 2017. Six months later, Johnson\u2014the interim president and then-head of its Mississippi conference\u2014was elected to the role. <\/p>\n In Trump\u2019s first term, the NAACP took on high-profile court cases like its successful defense of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals<\/a>, and since the start of his second, it\u2019s taken a more offensive posture, disinviting the sitting president from last year\u2019s annual conference<\/a> for the first time in its history, and stepping up its support for more direct, localized action in Black communities resisting aggressive ICE raids<\/a> and rapidly expanding data centers.<\/p>\n At the end of January, the NAACP launched a campaign<\/a> calling on senators to block federal funding for ICE, impeach and prosecute Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and, ultimately, abolish the agency<\/a> completely.<\/p>\n More and more Americans are calling on the government to do the same. More than six in ten respondents in a New York Times<\/em>\/Siena poll<\/a>\u2014 after the fatal shooting of Good on January 7, but a week before federal agents killed Alex Pretti<\/a> on January 24\u2014believed that \u201cthe tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have gone too far.\u201d (Other polls<\/a> show weakening support, even among Trump\u2019s base<\/a>, for the president\u2019s immigration agenda, which may make it increasingly difficult for the GOP to hold on to its narrow majority in Congress.)<\/p>\n The same poll<\/a> found that voters\u2019 primary concern is the economy, where Trump\u2019s approval ratings have plummeted<\/a>. Data centers cropping up across the country have sent electricity bills surging<\/a>, contributing to voters\u2019 anger about the cost of living. As the AI industry booms, voters across party lines<\/a> are pushing back on data center construction in their communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Johnson told me that the NAACP has been \u201con the frontlines\u201d of the data center resistance, starting with its work in Southwest Memphis, where Elon Musk\u2019s xAI quickly built a data center<\/a> in 2024, beginning construction last year on a second one<\/a> on the Tennessee-Mississippi border, with talks of a third in the works<\/a>. Last July, the organization threatened a lawsuit<\/a> against xAI over the company\u2019s use of polluting methane gas turbines<\/a> to power those facilities, which it contends violate the Clean Air Act. Last September, the organization released<\/a> resources for activists and organizers demanding increased transparency and accountability from the tech giants building this infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Trump\u2019s second victory, Johnson said it was clear to the group he heads that the administration \u201cwould pursue a course of mass distraction\u201d to achieve its goals. Trump first deployed these \u201cdistraction tactics\u201d<\/a>\u2014\u201cothering communities and seeking to erode protections\u201d at home and creating conflict abroad\u2014to push through his tax and spending megabill<\/a>, Johnson said.<\/p>\n Now, as immigration agents swarm blue cities and tensions escalate with countries like Venezuela<\/a> and Nigeria<\/a>, \u201cwe believe all of these things in sum total are means by which the administration is trying to avoid the accountability around the Epstein files and releasing them, and to mask the current economic predicament\u201d\u2014including prices that, despite Trump\u2019s promises, continue to rise<\/a>.<\/p>\n In preparation for the midterms, the NAACP has been \u201cactively engaged in the mid-cycle redistricting process, which is unprecedented,\u201d he told me. In addition to filing lawsuits in states like Texas<\/a>, the NAACP is \u201cworking with policymakers in certain targeted states\u201d to protect Black voters\u2019 access to the ballot box. Last fall, the NAACP also launched a mass mobilization in support of California\u2019s redistricting ballot initiative, Prop 50, as I reported for Mother Jones<\/em><\/a> in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nearly 70 years after King\u2019s speech, as the NAACP reaches its 117th anniversary\u2014coinciding with a century of Black history commemorations<\/a> and the nation\u2019s semiquincenntinal\u2014Johnson told me he believes \u201cwe are in a setback,\u201d but also \u201cat an inflection point.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u2019s at stake, he said, is \u201cwhether or not we will have a true representative democracy, or something less than that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n