Grosse Pointes Looking at Establishing NAACP Branch

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The five Grosse Pointe communities are looking into establishing their own branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation’s oldest civil rights group, to overcome a long-standing reputation for exclusion.

Leading the charge are public relations executive Greg Bowers, 50, of Grosse Pointe, and retired social worker Elaine Flowers, 64, of Grosse Pointe Park, the Detroit Free Press reports.

They need the support of at least 50 people who would be willing to pay the $30 annual dues. A meeting to form the NAACP chapter will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 23, at Rockefellers Oyster Bar & Grill, Grosse Pointe Park. It’s open to everyone, regardless of where they live.

“That would be a worthy goal — to have black teachers added to the Grosse Pointe schools,” said Bowers, whose public relations company represented Grosse Pointe Park during the investigation of police officers who had made and distributed a video they made asking a black, cognitively impaired man to dance for them.

The racial makeup varies in the five Grosse Pointes — Grosse Pointe, Grosse Pointe Park, Grosse Pointe Farms, Grosse Pointe Shores and Grosse Pointe Woods — and Harper Woods, the most racially diverse of the communities with 43.5 percent of the population black. In Grosse Pointe Shores, only 1.7 percent of residents are black, according to 2010 U.S. Census figures.

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If a branch of the NAACP does form to serve the communities, most of the members would likely be white, but Yvonne White, state president of the NAACP of Michigan, said that’s historically significant.

“Most people don’t know the NAACP was founded by a small group of white Americans who decided they’d seen enough” of racism, White said.