NAACP’s prison branch in Cameron gets its wish to host conventioneers

On Saturday, 20-some NAACP convention-goers walked through the metal detectors at the maximum security prison in Cameron, Missouri, to participate in a historic event. After years of planning and pleading, prisoners with the NAACP Branch #4003 at the Crossroads Correctional Facility were granted permission to host a seminar at the prison as part of the civil rights group’s 101st convention in Kansas City.

Among the attendees: Effie Jones Bowers, a black student who desegregated Hall High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. “She has a thousand-watt smile,” says Jon Marc Taylor, a Crossroads inmate and Branch #4003’s convention and resolutions chairman.