The NAACP Welcomes White House Meeting With President Bush. NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said meeting is a chance to discuss disagreements

In a surprise move, President Bush has invited outgoing NAACP President & CEO Kweisi Mfume to the White House today for a private meeting. Mfume wrote Bush on November 5 requesting an opportunity to discuss “some of the domestic and social problems that continue to plague us as a nation.”

Four years ago, the Bush White House ignored a similar letter from Mfume. Although candidate Bush appeared at the NAACP’s Convention in 2000, in 2004 President Bush became the first President since Warren G. Harding to refuse to meet with the country’s oldest and largest civil rights organization when he declined an invitation to speak at the 2004 NAACP Annual Convention in Philadelphia.

“We welcome any meeting with an American President,” said Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP National Board of Directors. “After being shut out of the White House for four years, we look forward to discussion about our differences – and even agreement when our agendas intersect.”

Bond said the NAACP has been wrongly accused of being hostile to Republicans. He said: “We’ve had good relationships with Education Secretary Rod Paige and Secretary of State Colin Powell, who have spoken at our meetings; with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice who received an Image Award from the NAACP; and even with Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose appointment we opposed. I’ve been to the Pentagon for a briefing from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. We object to policies, not to parties, and when we think the policies are wrong, we’re not afraid to say so.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its half-million adult and youth members throughout the United States and the world are frontline advocates for civil rights in their communities and monitor equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.