An NAACP chapter of a different hue

Though the organization has 2,200 chapters, Jealous has taken a special interest in this Maine group because of the NAACP's ongoing attempts to reach beyond its core in the black community. The association's membership has been stagnant at about half a million members for years, and part of Jealous's plan to increase that number is to be more inclusive.

He has formed an alliance around health-care reform with the country's largest Latino advocacy group, and in recent speeches has highlighted examples of diversity in the NAACP's ranks: the Bangladeshi chapter president in Hamtramck, Mich.; the Southeast Asian presidents in Seattle and San Jose; the Latino executive committee members in the Southwest; the Native American members in Alabama and Oklahoma.

More than any other example, though, the Maine prison chapter has become a kind of symbol of the 100-year-old civil rights group finding its way on the shifting terrain of race. Jealous talks about the chapter frequently, and as he deals with questions about the organization's relevance since Barack Obama was elected to the White House, he has returned here again and again.

Today's trip is his third since becoming president in September 2008. A busy man with a busy schedule, he once again finds himself in this large room with a crowd of mostly white prisoners, greeting a dark-haired white man in starched prison blues with the words, "Hi, Mr. President."

A voice for inmates

The man Jealous is talking to is William "Billy" Flynn, who is in for 28 years to life and is also president of the prison chapter. "All right, gentlemen," Flynn says, stepping to the microphone.

A poster of Malcolm X delivering his "By Any Means Necessary" speech is affixed to the front of the lectern. A cinder block wall is covered in fliers that read: "NAACP You Have the Right to Vote" and posters of Obama, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali. In more than a dozen posters, no one is white.

"There's some confusion when people see an Irish guy as president of the NAACP chapter," Flynn says later. "I've had my fair share of comments."

Standing behind the poster of Malcolm X, Flynn talks about what he considers the lack of rights for prisoners. Sentenced at 16 after pleading guilty to a highly publicized New Hampshire murder, Flynn, now 35, has spent his adult life behind bars. He did not know anything about the NAACP when he arrived and is surprised to learn that he is one of the few whites leading an organization chapter.

The history he does know comes from a few well-worn pages photocopied from books, passed down from the men who chartered the chapter to try to improve conditions in the majority-white prison. From those pages, he learned that the NAACP was founded 100 years ago by both blacks and whites, a fact he enthusiastically repeats whenever anyone asks him what a white man is doing in charge.

And if the question is why he is in the association at all, he explains that it seems better than the Jaycees and the Longtimers, the only other organizations the prison allows, because the NAACP chapter receives outside support. The leaders of the Portland NAACP branch and Jealous have been willing to meet with prison officials on behalf of the inmates. With "an extra-powerful support group on the street," Flynn says the prisoners can get the officials' attention. They have been able to get them to grant them lower phone rates and to issue new rules that let social groups meet more often.

Joseph "JJ" Jackson -- the chapter's vice president, who is black -- was locked up in May 1995 and knows Flynn well. "This is a black organization, but you have that felon beside your name and that makes you a minority," he says. "You're treated like you're black. Frankly, everybody needs civil rights here."

Flynn and Jackson take their work seriously. Flynn says he runs his meetings according to Robert's Rules of Order and mails out the minutes to the Portland branch of the NAACP, which sends them to the NAACP national headquarters in Baltimore, where Jealous's assistant reviews them. Together, the inmates and their backers on the outside were able to organize this meeting, where prisoners can register to vote.