Hello my name is Anne, and I’m the daughter of an employee at the NAACP. This was my 5th time going to the NAACP’s National Convention. This year’s convention was held at the Mandalay Bay’s convention center in Las Vegas.
The first event that I went to was the award ceremony for Act-So (Afro-Academic Cultural Technical Scientific Olympics). The ceremony started with a dance routine, and then everyone participating sang Lift Every Voice. The ceremony was a few hours long.
During the convention there were a few special events and brunches. Two of these were the Spingarn Award dinner, and Women in NAACP brunch. The Spingarn Award was presented to Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. for exceptional work for the African American community. The dinner started with everyone singing Lift Every Voice, and then food being served. The award was presented at the end of the dinner.
A lot of people came to the convention, like Patina Miller, Michael Rainey, and Wes Moore. While Governor Moore was there he went to a lot of different places to speak to different groups. When I first saw him he was going to all the rooms where the employees were to meet everyone there. After he spoke to all of the staff members he went with the president and chairman of the NAACP and spoke to different regions.
In addition to Governor Moore, President Joe Biden also came to the convention. Because of President Biden visiting Las Vegas there was a lot more security. When I first got to Las Vegas there were Police officers standing at the side of the road. On the day of his speech everyone had to go through a magnetometer and have a bag check. There was about an hour-long wait to get upstairs to the convention center. When I had eventually got to the convention center, a few people had started to leave and get breakfast. The event was about 4 hours long. The President was the last person to speak. When everyone else was finished speaking, it took about an hour and a half for the President to start his speech. When he eventually got onto the stage everyone in the audience started chanting “four more years”. Unfortunately because of the chanting, I wasn’t able to hear most of what he said, but based on everyone else’s reactions it seems like it was a good speech.
Overall, while I don’t think this was my favorite convention, I still think it was pretty good.