District leaders said Tuesday that a deal that would move the headquarters of the nation’s largest civil rights organization, the NAACP, to Anacostia makes perfect sense.
“Being one [of] our leading civil rights organizations, it should be in the nation’s capital,” incoming mayor Adrian Fenty said Tuesday.
Mayor Anthony Williams announced Monday that a deal between the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the city could be inked within days. The NAACP is planning to move its headquarters from Baltimore to the Anacostia Gateway Project along the 1800 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Southeast.
The D.C. Council approved 12-0 Tuesday $3.5 million in city grants to help the NAACP acquire the property. NAACP officials had also looked at potential sitesin Prince George’s County earlier this fall.
Officials said the move would assist in the economic revitalization of the area by bringing as many as 150 new jobs as well as raising visibility of the neighborhood, which historically has been largely black and suffered from a negative public image.
