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Kojo Nantambu wants you to join the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP.

Nantambu, who took over as president last month, wants to boost the chapter’s profile as an advocacy organization. In essence, it needs a jolt of fresh bodies and ideas.

“I could not have seen the depth of the kind of work that needs to go on with the NAACP in terms of organization and administration,” he said. “A lot of times when you’re on the outside looking in you feel like things are easily taken care of, but they’re not. You need to surround yourself with skilled people who are dedicated and committed, who are not looking for self-gain. And you also have to deal with the reality of lack of resources.”

PHOTO/PAUL WILLIAMS III

The Rev. Kojo Nantambu, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP, says the organization needs to grow its membership and rebuild ties to communities.

That’s where the branch’s drive to build relationships throughout the county comes in. Nantambu said the civil rights organization is looking to recruit members who are willing to work on issues most pressing to people of color in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

“We’re trying very hard to strengthen the foundation and structure in terms of our Executive Committee members and putting our committees together to be responsible for going into the community and investigating various issues such as employment discrimination, the school situation,” Nantambu, 57, said. “What we’re trying to do now is shore up our administration, getting the right people in place, putting together our goals and objectives, our strategies for doing those things before we do anything else.”

The branch, which has between “350 and 500” members, according to Nantambu, is also launching a membership drive to boost its rolls by 1,000 before Feb. 15 – Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Another goal is to establish a physical presence by locating a permanent headquarters.

“One thing we know is important is we’ve got to have visibility,” Nantambu said. “We want a permanent office space in the community. That gives us a presence in the community and it gives a sense of stability as well as confidence to members of the community as well as our constituents.”

The NAACP as a whole  faces perceptions that civil rights activism is passe. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the chapter’s leadership vacuum hampered its ability to engage the most pressing issues facing people of color.

“One of the things I found out was a lot of people have a negative attitude about the NAACP because it has not been functioning very well lately,” he said. “If you don’t see people, it feels like they’re not doing anything. (The NAACP) has lost a lot of relevance in our community and that’s one of the other objectives we’re working on as a priority, to bring back its relevance, its prominence and its prestige in the community, but most important to make it effective again.”

Nantambu decried what he called “bourgeois, or upper middle-class” leadership that put individual status ahead of results in recent years. The solution, he maintains, is a more inclusive approach.

“We’re trying to convey to the community that this is a community organization where everybody does have a part and everybody will get to utilize their skills,” he said, “to utilize whatever talents they have as long as it uplifts the community.”

With a legacy that includes former national NAACP leaders like Kelly Alexander and his son Kelly Jr., who is now a member of the N.C. House of Representatives, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg branch once was a major player in civil rights. Its success will strengthen the statewide organization, Nantambu said.

“There’s great anticipation by the state (leadership),” he said. “A lot of people are looking and waiting anxiously for us to get moving again. I have no doubt in my mind that within the next six months …we will move back into the forefront of the state. We will be the premier organization, not in a conceited sense, but we have very serious goals and objectives.”

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