Move to Form Grosse Pointes NAACP Gets Huge Response

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Long considered a “lily white” community, the Grosse Pointe communities are forming their own branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Organizers met the threshold of 50 people needed to form the NAACP branch, but more than double that number showed up at an organizational meeting Wednesday, WXYZ-TV reports.

“What’s cool about this is sends a message to the rest of the world that this is not the Grosse Pointes of the past,” organizer Greg Bowens said. “People of color are welcome and it’s very well known.”

Yvette DeBerry, who has lived in the Pointes for 17 years, said she has seen change, “but we think there still need to be a lot of change take place.”

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.

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.

Related

• Grosse Pointes Looking at Establishing NAACP Branch