For years, New York City’s flagship main Public Library has annually honored a group of “literary lions.” Long a civil rights and civil liberties lion, Michael Meyers is a former assistant director of the NAACP; personal assistant to its late executive director, Roy Wilkins; and a protege of one of my mentors, Dr. Kenneth Clark. Yet on Feb. 21, at the annual meeting in New York of the century-old NAACP, Meyers, refused permission to speak, was removed by NAACP security. The meeting was held in the midst of a furor of protest by the Rev. Al Sharpton and other black public figures over a cartoon by the New York Post’s Sean Delonas showing a chimpanzee shot and killed by the police. Said one of the cops: “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill.” Interpreting this as a racist attack on President Barack Obama, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and its chairman, Julian Bond, had joined the angry chorus of protestors calling for a boycott of the New York Post, and the firing of the cartoonist and the paper’s editor.

Meyers, a widely publicized defender of the First Amendment, had publicly objected. And as a passionate civil libertarian, he said of the rage to punish those connected with the cartoon: “All political pundits deserve a wide berth for social criticism and for parodying and poking fun at and criticizing our political leaders, no matter the skin color or race of the public official.” Attending the NAACP’s annual meeting in the ballroom of the New York Hilton Hotel, Meyers rose following a member’s speech calling for a boycott of the New York Post but also of all the national enterprises of its owner, Rupert Murdock. At the microphone, addressing Chairman Julian Bond, Meyers began: “I wish to speak in opposition.”

“I do not recognize you,” Bond sharply cut off Meyers. “Your views are not welcomed here.” Michael turned and continued to speak to the assembly. Bond cut off his microphone and summoned security personnel as the NAACP’s new president Benjamin Jealous sat silently. The contemptuous dismissal of this decidedly uncowardly lion of the civil rights movement reminded me of a dispute years ago between Meyers and Bond. The latter had urged the Pennsylvania affiliate of the NAACP to press the state board of education to bar Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” from the schools because of its inclusion of what newspapers prefer to call “the n-word.” That novel was and remains the most powerful antiracist classic in our literature. Meyers knew that, and protested, but I was astonished that Bond, an accomplished writer and cultural historian, would engage in such philistine miseducation.

In the considerable press coverage of the fiery reaction to the New York Post cartoon, I saw no mention of the imperious ouster from the NAACP annual meeting of Michael Meyers. Significantly, this analytical dissenter, as creator and head of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, has long directed its “Civil Rights and Race Relations Project” in the city’s schools. (I am not aware of any regular NAACP presence in those schools.) Since 1989, in this project scores of volunteer discussion leaders — mostly lawyers and law students — work weekly in New York high school or junior high school classes to, Meyers explains, “help equip students with the critical thinking skills and information they need in order to challenge common stereotypes and myths about people because of skin color, religion, national origin, disability, sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation ... They use ... courtroom scenarios and mock trials to engage the students in examining ... stereotypes.”

Meyers should invite Bond and 36-year-old Jealous, to audit some of these classes. And I’d like to be in one of them if Sharpton were there debating with some of these students about free speech.

Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.

Copyright 2009, Nat Hentoff.

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