Branches of the NAACP across the United States host annual Freedom Fund events with the focus of honoring those in the community who advance civil rights and social justice. As the oldest civil rights organization in America, founded in the wake of the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Il., the NAACP has been intentional about advocacy and uplift of the Black race, denouncing racial hatred and addressing issues that perpetuate marginalization and discrimination. In 1939, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund was established as an independent legal arm of the organization and was instrumental in litigating the 1954 Supreme Court Case Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, in the fight for equality in public schools. This landmark decision ousted the hypocrisy of separate but equal policies in public education.
The Spokane Branch of the NAACP was founded in 1919, just a decade after the national organization. In honor of the late Michael P. Anderson, who considered Spokane his hometown (by way of Fairchild AFB), high school students are invited each year to apply for a scholarship in his name. As many know, Anderson was a former U.S. Air Force pilot and NASA astronaut who met an untimely death in the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster of 2003. His legacy of breaking barriers and thriving in places that were historically off limits to Black people is the impetus of the scholarship. The Freedom Fund Gala is the branch’s annual scholarships fundraiser. This year the keynote speaker is actor and activist Hill Harper.