(WXYZ) — The Detroit Branch of the NAACP has announced the keynote speaker for their annual Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner, which is scheduled for Sunday, April 26 at Huntington Place in downtown Detroit.
The organization says House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will headline the event, because "our keynote speaker for this very critical hour ... each day faces the challenge of government shutdowns, Americans crying out for support, aid, and respect, as bombs drop in Iran, recently Venezuela, Caribbean, and Nigeria, with threats of takeovers of Greenland, and making Canada our 51st state."
Previous keynote speakers have included Maryland Governor and possible 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidate Wes Moore, former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, and former Vice President and, at the time, U.S. Senator from California Kamala Harris.
The event will also feature the presentation of two Great Expectations Awards to Dwan Dandridge, Co-Founder & CEO, Black Leaders Detroit, and Rev. QuanTez Pressley, the Pastor of Third New Hope Baptist Church.
The organization will also present the Ida B. Wells Barnett Freedom & Justice Award to New York Attorney General Letitia James, "based on her commitment to justice, fearless advocacy, and self-determination against all the odds," and the James Weldon Johnson Lifetime Achievement Award to Ruby Bridges Hall, who became the subject of iconic images when she integrated the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1959 as a 6-year-old, escorted to school by US Marshals, an event which was memorialized in the Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With.
