The Minneapolis NAACP selected outspoken law professor and local Black Lives Matter leader Nekima Levy-Pounds as its next president, offering a new direction for a local chapter facing criticism for languishing in recent years.
Levy-Pounds, 38, has pledged to establish a youth and collegiate branch, approach companies about adding more local jobs in certain neighborhoods, and tackle the issues of excessive force as well as more diversity and transparency in the police department.
She also takes over at a time of growing scrutiny of the vast economic and achievement gap between white and black Minnesotans.
"The Twin Cities and the city of Minneapolis have some of the worst disparities for people of color across the country in key indicators of quality of life," Levy-Pounds said Monday. "There's a lot of work for us to do."
On Monday afternoon, Levy-Pounds checked in at the St. Paul office of the grass-roots nonprofit Brotherhood Inc., which she co-founded to help young, at-risk black men. One young person remembered how he was arrested and questioned shortly after his uncle was shot and killed by police. Another came to realize that he was living in survival mode worried only about what immediate things he needed instead of concentrating on the future.
"It's deep stuff that you don't really get to talk about," Levy-Pounds told the men.
Levy-Pounds said she herself grew up surrounded by poverty and crime in South Central Los Angeles.
As a child she dreamed of becoming a lawyer "to change things." It wasn't until she was awarded a scholarship to attend a mostly white boarding school in Massachusetts that she grew to understand the difference between those with financial means and those without, she said. As a teenager, she began to study black history.
