After a year of sparse activity, leaders of Charlotte's African American community are seeking to revive the local chapter of the NAACP.

Local members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will go to the polls today to pick a new president they hope can guide the branch out of obscurity and become a uniting voice for the black community.

The vote comes after the previous president was removed in 2008 and the board was restructured.

“Any community the size of Charlotte needs an active and vigorous NAACP chapter,” said N.C. Rep. Kelly Alexander Jr., a former chapter and state NAACP president whose father revived the local chapter in 1940.

Candidates Kojo Nantambu, 57, and Michael Lawson, 64, are running to lead the newly restructured chapter.

Nantambu, pastor of Green Oak Missionary Baptist Church, worked as a former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools parent advocate. Lawson, a retired businessman, is the chairman of the African American Caucus of the Mecklenburg Democratic Party.

Both pledge strong leadership and a clean break from the past. In 2008, the national NAACP removed local branch President Ken White over questions about his leadership.

Nantambu says he wants to fill the void left by the NAACP. And he wants to recruit young people who have been inspired by the election of the first African American president.

“We need to resurrect (the NAACP) so that it has the same kind of presence and effectiveness that it's had in days gone by,” Nantambu said. “There is still a lot of things in the community that have not been settled, racially and legally.”

Lawson also wants to tap youth.

“Our seniors are the foundation of the organization and the backbone of its membership,” he said. “However, we need the youth to reinvigorate the NAACP, get active, do the legwork, go door-to-door and kick-start an active and progressive agenda for tomorrow.”

Established in 1919, the chapter struggled through several dormant periods until 1940 when Kelly Alexander Sr. revived the state's oldest chapter.

Akin Ogundiran, chair of the Africana Studies department at UNC Charlotte, said a strong local chapter can give the black community more stature and pull. It can focus the many different voices among black leaders.

“The strength is not in having the same opinion,” he said. “The strength is how to define a common goal and using opinions to work out how to reach that common goal.”

Weeks after the inauguration of the first African-American president, the NAACP celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Alexander said the days of marching and demonstrating and demanding access are mostly over because overt barriers have pretty much fallen. He said the focus is shifting toward helping people actually realize the opportunities that are now available.

“It's one thing to be able to integrate a hotel – i.e. the people who operate the hotel can't keep you out because of your race.

“It's quite another thing to be able to check in and be able to pay the tab to check out.”

Members of the Mecklenburg County Chapter of the NAACP can cast their votes from 2 to 7 p.m. today at Little Rock AME Zion church, 401 N McDowell St.