Detroit NAACP plans funeral rites for ‘n-word’

updated 5:20 p.m. ET April 30, 2007

DETROIT - The NAACP held a symbolic funeral in Detroit 63 years ago for Jim Crow.

The civil rights organization will do the same this summer for the "n-word," the Rev. Wendell Anthony said Sunday.

Anthony, president of the civil rights organization's Detroit branch, said members and supporters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will conduct services and a "eulogy" for the racial slur. The mock funeral will be held during the NAACP national convention July 7-12 in Detroit, he said.

"We are committed to ending hate — word and talk," Anthony said. "It doesn't do anyone any good, whether it's a journalist on TV or a rapper on the radio."

The announcement comes after a renewed discussion nationally about racial insensitivity, brought on by Don Imus' derogatory comments about black members of the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

Imus didn't use the n-word in those comments but was fired in early April by CBS Radio and NBC after major companies including General Motors pulled their advertising spots.

"Now that corporate America has caught up, maybe something will happen," Anthony said. "We have to stop investing in stuff that is killing us."

Jim Crow was the systematic, mostly Southern practice of discrimination against and segregation of blacks from the end of post-Civil War reconstruction into the mid-20th century.

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