Editors note 3/14/24

A group that has organized 103 annual banquets can be expected to know how to manage conflict with understanding and forgiveness. At its event Sunday, the Springfield branch of the NAACP kept its program moving while its usually vocal local director, Teresa Haley, sat quietly at a front table. Nobody said anything about her having been suspended last December from her position as statewide NAACP director until the guest speaker, Dwayne Bryant, projected on the screen a photo of an elephant in a room. Then he explained how Haley had been recorded secretly, probably illegally, making ugly comments about immigrants to a meeting of Illinois NAACP leaders, comments later leaked to news media. "I hate what she said," he told the several hundred attendees, "but I understand the context." Then he recounted to this biblically knowledgeable audience the New Testament story of the woman caught in adultery. To the men about to stone her, Jesus said, "Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone." After they all left, Jesus told the woman he didn't condemn her, but "go, and sin no more." Looking toward Haley, Bryant said this group doesn't condemn her, "but don't be calling people savages no more." – Fletcher Farrar, editor