BLOOMINGTON - The Bloomington-Normal chapter of the NAACP has achieved much in its 90-year history of promoting racial equality, but much more needs to be done.

That was the theme of a series of speakers at the organization's annual Freedom Fund Banquet on Thursday evening at the Parke Hotel & Conference Center in Bloomington.

"I grew up here," said Willie Brown, a State Farm Insurance Cos. vice president and a life member of the NAACP. "I never noticed all the work they were doing on my behalf to make the way for us. I - and many others in this room - we are a reflection of all their hard work."

He recalled a 1954 newspaper article in which the Bloomington City Council debated whether to install indoor plumbing at a Miller Park Lake building because that was "where the colored kids swam."

Community activist Willie Holton-Halbert, also a NAACP life member, recalled how she and her husband, Charles Halbert, got involved in the NAACP in 1976. They both felt "the love and the feeling of making a difference," she said.

"It is and was more than an organization - it was a way to not only express that everyone had a right to be respected but you could actually do something about it," said Holton-Halbert, one of the Not in Our Town organizers.

Diversity is vital to everyone, another speaker said.

"The moment we cut somebody out - we lose an opportunity to learn," said Julian Glover, winner of the Harry Hightower Youth Community Service Award. It was one of a number of awards announced during the three-hour program.

Illinois State University President Al Bowman noted ISU had admitted blacks since 1874 and is committed to continuing to promote the NAACP's message. In January, the university and it's student chapter of the NAACP will sponsor an appearance by actor Danny Glover.

Bowman introduced keynote speaker ISU Police Chief Ron Swan, who wrote "From the Ashes of Tragedy: The Birth of the NAACP."

Swan spoke about the infamous race riot that rocked Springfield - a city that treasures its ties to Abraham Lincoln - from Aug. 14 to 16, 1908. It left seven dead, whole neighborhoods of the city burned and thousands of people displaced in terror.

While there were worse riots, this one caught the nation's attention and launched the formation of the national NAACP.

"They called it a race riot - it was really 20th-century terrorism," Swan said.

The riot was launched in part by false rape accusations a married white woman made against a black man, Swan said. She later recanted, saying she was trying to cover up an affair with a white man who had beaten her, and she needed to explain her injuries, Swan said.