By STUART KLATZ
"I just felt it was time to get some new blood into the organization," King said.
King came to the NAACP after a long career in civil rights. During the 1960s, she was the field secretary for the Southwest Georgia Division of the Students for Non-Violence Coordinating Committee. She started at the Long Beach NAACP as secretary to John Simpkins, who was the first president of the local association.
The NAACP has not been a constant presence in Long Beach. It has been formed, shut down, and formed again several times according to need and participation. King became president in 1996, when she began to lead efforts to close down the local industrial waste incinerator. When the plant was closed in 1997, she found herself at the head of an organization in need of direction.
She responded by forming the Ujamma Unlimited Youth Program. Ujamma means "cooperative economics" in Swahili and is one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa. Ujamma Unlimited helped youngsters start their own businesses by selling shares of stock to their friends and family for $5 each. The money was then used to purchase black Barbie dolls. A Queens clothing store donated African clothes for the dolls, which were then sold to the public. The children collected enough money to reinvest, issue dividends to shareholders and still earn a salary.
The program was so successful that an article about Ujamma Unlimited appeared in the Long Island section of the Daily News, King said proudly. "Channel 11 picked up the story, and we were eventually invited by the Hugh O'Brien Youth Organization to present our undertaking to the Southern New York Conference of High School Students at Adelphi University," he said.
A second initiative that King oversaw was the Nia Summer Academy. Nia means "purpose" in Swahili, and the academy was formed in response to a February 2002 Newsday report that only 15 percent of African-American students had passed state-mandated eighth-grade English and math exams the previous year. King saw this as an opportunity to reach out to middle-school youths, and soon a tutoring program was established at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center in Long Beach.
Any student who requested tutoring was granted at least two hours per week with a reading tutor. Workshops were offered, featuring guests such as Hezekiah Brown, an assistant to Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, local psychoanalyst Lou Gover and representatives of the Long Beach Public Library. In addition, Hofstra University invited youngsters in the tutoring course to be guests for a day in their prestigious Noah scholarship program.
"As they prepare to enter high school, these undertakings really give students a necessary boost," King said. "We tend to react to needs as we see them."
During her tenure, King often faced a lack of interest on the part of the African-American community. She hopes that her successor will encourage parents to get involved in school organizations such as the PTA. The new administration at Long Beach High School has helped make her optimistic.
"Principal [Nicholas] Restivo has reached out to our organization and even went on a bus trip with us to Harlem to see a show at the Apollo Theater," she said. "With his help, we're hoping to form a step club for high school students. Stepping incorporates moves similar to those used by a drill team, but with more precision and more attitude."
As her six years in office draw to a close, King still carries with her a philosophy that she developed after reading a school mural several years ago: "If you think you can, or if you think you can't, you're right."
