Abstract: The success of any organization relies upon its future leaders and the NAACP is no exception to this. This paper will discuss the importance of establishing young, educated, and enthusiastic activists. These are the types of people that have the potential to be the next great leaders. Injection of new ideas will determine the outcome and success of any establishment, especially those that have been around as long as the NAACP. .
"Our civil rights institutions need leadership from those who are most invested in tomorrow" (Tatum, 2007, p. 12). Have the strategies and battles of the NAACP and other similar organizations grown old and tired? There are African-American leaders out there who have dedicated their early lives to the NAACP, such as Sammie Dow, a member who has been a participant within the NAACP since junior high. He stated .
"looking at leadership development, organizing training opportunities, looking at how we provide tool-kits and resources for young people to educate others in their community on issues, teaching young people how to build relationships with community partners and community leaders, and teaching young people how to identify their leadership style to mature their own voice" (Utsey, 2013, p. 41).
Within the first six months of his tenure, he was able to launch the Revive 25 Campaign and lock in five thousand new recruits for the NAACP. People like Dow are vital to the survival of organizations like the NAACP, without a youth movement; ideas, battles, members, and many other aspects of the organizations will grow old and exhausted. .
There needs to be a plan in which young men and women are shown the road to membership. Leaders need to be built within the program itself; some leadership abilities may be instinctual, but great leaders are created. One program that has surely outdone itself is the W.E.B. Du Bois Leadership Academy. It began as a simple summer camp and is now a structured, funded, weekly program for the young men of Cleveland.
