(WXYZ) — The Detroit Branch of the NAACP held its annual Fight For Freedom Fund Dinner on Sunday night at Huntington Place in downtown Detroit.
House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries was the keynote spaker for 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."
You can watch his address in the video below.
Other major leaders from across Michigan were also at the dinner, including congresspersons, senators, business leaders and more.
Hear from Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Sens. Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin in the videos below
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 also eatured 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 also presented 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.
You can see Letitia James' speech in the video below
