The exclusion of the local chapter of the NAACP from the city’s official Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. Not a good look.

The unwillingness or inability of another respected civil rights organization to ensure that the New Orleans unit of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization plays a role in an event designed to pay homage to a man who fought for the very rights we all hold dear today—especially if it has been pressured into making this decision. Not a good look.

If there is the slightest possibility this has been fueled by the fact that the NAACP New Orleans, under the leadership of attorney Danatus King, has been an outspoken critic of the city's administration. Definitely not a good look.

NAACP officials and its supporters say reports that the organization has not been allowed to take part in the event because its request was too late are just not true. According to the NAACP, there was verbal confirmation that it would play an “official and meaningful” role in the program dating as far back as mid-November, with an official request being made on Dec. 28. And in a printed statement, the NAACP says that the decision to now exclude the group is tied to the adversarial positions it has taken relative to some of the mayor’s policies and decisions.

Not being a party to any meetings or private conversations, I don’t know what’s true. I could speculate. But why? It doesn’t even matter! The devil is so not in the details on this one.

No one has been able to offer a sound, sensible reason why the NAACP should not take part in official MLK Day events. Except for death or destruction, I can’t think of one.

An untimely request—really, seriously? By late December the program had been so carefully and meticulously planned—etched in stone—that a place could not be made for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People? Well . . . okay . . . if you say so.

But please note that explanations like that one make it easy for folks to subscribe to the theory that the NAACP is getting snubbed. And that’s just not a good look for New Orleans.

I had the recent good fortune to converse with a veteran of the local Civil Rights Movement. And I was struck by his account of how various local organizations (the SCLC, the NAACP, SNCC, CORE, etc.) worked together during that time. He explained that they didn’t always agree with each other’s methods, and they weren’t all friends. This group was too militant. Or that one was too docile.

Yet, despite their differences, they came together once week over red beans and rice and shared what they knew and what they were doing in the name of justice. He chuckled when he talked about the critical importance of those updates from the individuals in the “docile” groups, whose unassuming and passive tactics gave them inroads with the White power structure. Because of them, they were able to learn what White business and political leaders of the time were thinking, planning and doing in response to the Movement.

I am one who has benefited from the Civil Rights Movement. I have never had to sit on the back of anything, unless I wanted to and have only seen “Whites Only” signs in museums and books. That is to say, I can only speculate about why the Movement was successful, because I was not there. But I’d like to think it had something to do with how these groups came together, refusing to let the fact that they differed in tactics and tenets get in the way of their common goal.

That’s why I am so unnerved by the commotion over the MLK celebration. That in 2012—any one of us—White or Black—would allow divisiveness to rear its ugly head in such a public way makes no sense to me. That the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday observance would be chosen as the time to take any position that would lead to such division is unthinkable. And not letting NAACP take an active part in the official MLK Day celebration is equally unconscionable.

Perhaps I am just naïve, but I am thinking of all days on the calendar that Jan. 16, 2012, would be one on which we could come together—even in New Orleans, despite whatever disputes and disagreements we have and, in the spirit of Dr. King, embrace one another. No division, no discord—just little hope, a little peace, a little parity.

Now that . . . that would be a good look.