ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 7, 1997 TAG: 9704070118
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE
Twenty-five students are needed to start a chapter of the civil rights group that disbanded in the late 1980s.
The NAACP is looking for 25 interested University of Virginia students to re-establish a chapter on campus.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's campus chapter disbanded in the late 1980s because of lack of interest. Now, civil rights leaders believe the time is right to find the minimum number of students to get the chapter back up and running.
``I think we are going to be successful in this because the students are ready,'' said George King III, president of the NAACP's Charlottesville branch.
Founded in 1909 to combat discrimination against blacks, the NAACP has fallen on hard times in recent decades as membership declined. Under the national leadership of former Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, the group is targeting young people who might feel removed from the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s.
``I think the reason that it lost so much backing from the youth is it fell out of touch with its main base of support,'' said Rahsan Boykin, an 18-year-old freshman from Elmont, N.Y., leading the effort to re-establish the chapter.
Of the approximately 18,000 students at the Charlottesville school, 9.1 percent, or slightly more than 1,600, are black.
The school, which enrolled its first black under a court order in 1950, has a reputation for graduating black undergraduates. Eighty-four percent of its black undergraduates who entered the school from 1986 to 1989 graduated in six years, tops in the nation among public schools.
Virginia State University, a predominantly black school in Ettrick, recently revived its campus chapter. Virginia Union University, a predominantly black school in Richmond, also is in the process of establishing a chapter.
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