Bush takes message to Urban League

President Bush has agreed to appear next week at the annual convention of the National Urban League, just two weeks after skipping the NAACP’s national conference for the third year in a row.

Mr. Bush, who received a standing ovation when he spoke to the Urban League’s national convention in Washington in 2001, will join the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, among the speakers for the five-day convention, according to several Republican sources close to the event.

The convention begins Saturday in Pittsburgh.

The president “should have spoken to the NAACP — it is the nation’s oldest civil rights group — but I am glad he is doing this,” Mr. Cummings said. “I don’t know what his rationale is with regard to speaking with the Urban League … but by not speaking to the NAACP, it seems inconsistent.”

The White House declined to comment. Urban League President Marc Morial also refused to comment yesterday.

Mr. Bush was strongly criticized during last week’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People conference in Miami Beach for his refusal to attend the group’s annual event for the third straight year.

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said in a highly charged keynote speech that “Republicans appeal to the dark underside of American culture, to that minority of Americans who reject democracy and equality.”

The president appears to be seizing on polls in recent years, including a 2001 Urban League survey, that have found many black Americans believe economic opportunity, rather than political leadership, should be the focus of major black organizations.

Mr. Bush has been stressing economic opportunity in his bid to court black voters, focusing his outreach efforts on the black business community rather than the special interest groups that have long criticized Republicans.

The National Urban League is seen as the least political of the major national civil rights groups, most of which are staunchly liberal and outspokenly Democratic.

With affiliates in 34 states, the Urban League concerns itself more with economics and self-sufficiency than with political activism.

In his 2001 speech to the Urban League, Mr. Bush was warmly received as he spoke of the need to improve the educational performance of blacks in schools, decrying “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”

Education Secretary Rod Paige and Alphonso Jackson, deputy secretary of housing and urban development, also will address the Urban League convention.

Mr. Bush has been right in his refusal to meet with groups such as the NAACP, said Armstrong Williams, a black conservative commentator.

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