The NAACP announced Monday the group will not invite President Donald Trump to its national convention next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, the first time the prominent civil rights organization has opted to exclude a sitting president in its 116-year history.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson announced the move at an afternoon press conference, accusing Trump of working against its mission.
“This has nothing to do with political party,” Johnson said in a statement. “Our mission is to advance civil rights, and the current president has made clear that his mission is to eliminate civil rights.”
A message to the White House seeking comment was not immediately returned.
In recent months, the NAACP has filed multiple lawsuits against Trump.
In April, for example, the group sued to stop the Department of Education from withholding federal money for schools that did not end diversity, equity and inclusion programs, arguing the department was prohibiting legal efforts to provide equal opportunity to Black students.
“There is a rich history of both Republicans and Democrats attending our convention,” the group said in a statement. Democrat Harry Truman, in 1947, became the first president to attend the NAACP’s national convention.
NAACP officials noted that the decision was weighty in that the organization had long invited presidents with whom it had policy disagreements.
Notably, Republican President George W. Bush addressed the group’s convention in July 2006, after months of criticism for his administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which had a disproportionate impact on Black residents in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region.
The group also noted that Republican President Ronald Reagan accepted its invitation during his first year in office. Civil rights leaders had criticized Reagan’s use during the 1980 campaign of the term “welfare queen” to refer to people abusing federal aid. The term was viewed by many as coded racial language for Black women.
During his 1981 speech to the NAACP convention in Denver, Reagan decried white supremacist hate groups and vowed his administration would investigate and prosecute “those who, by violence or intimidation, would attempt to deny Americans their constitutional rights.”
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Chris Megerian contributed from Washington.
