Syracuse Onondaga County NAACP Chapter Elects New President

Spectrum News – Our country has a president-elect, and so does the Syracuse Onondaga Chapter of the NAACP. The organization has been operating with an interim leader who was appointed after its previous president was arrested on matters unrelated to the NAACP. As Iris St. Meran reports, its new leader is a familiar face to the civil rights group in Central New York.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Linda Brown-Robinson is the president-elect of the Syracuse Onondaga County Chapter of the NAACP.

Her message to the community is, “We’re back and we’re going to be a relevant NAACP, and we’re going to be an NAACP for all people.”

The title of president is new to her, but she has been involved with the organization for a number of years. Not so much recently, she says, but she was one of the people to bring the advocacy group back to this area and re-chartered in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

“Things have changed, but they also have not changed,” Brown-Robinson said. “And so, I’m looking forward to that challenge because it was a challenge then.”

She said some of the challenges facing people in this community including housing, job discrimination, police relations and poverty.

“We have a lot to do, and everything is not confrontational in the form of what NAACP should be doing,” Brown-Robinson said. “We work with youth, we work with economic development. We have a separate youth council.”

Brown-Robinson has her own event planning business and used to work for the city of Syracuse. She’s on a number of boards throughout the community and is also the wife of Syracuse Common Council President Van Robinson, who was a past president of the NAACP. She says her husband gave her the necessary encouragement to take on this new position.

Linda-Brown Robinson will be sworn in next month and officially takes over in January.