NAACP speaker stresses discipline

Manigo, who is an associate minister at Lewis Chapel Missionary Baptist Church, served as guest speaker for the local NAACP's annual Freedom Fund and Mother of the Year program. About 100 people attended the affair at John Wesley United Methodist Church.

As a tie-in, Manigo's speech focused "a little bit," as she put it, on what God has done for strong mothers. "Discipline is the answer for strong mothers - strong voices to meet the challenges of today," she said.

She said society is "dead set against any kind of discipline until it's too late."

Manigo lamented the disciplinary ways of the past, as in the days she grew up the eighth of 15 children during the mid-1900s. She told the largely older crowd on hand that her mother was a strong woman. And that her mother made her children's clothes, cooked their meals and worked in the fields.

"I wish we could bring back what we had then," Manigo said from the pulpit. Parents never should have stopped spanking and disciplining their children, she said, and families never should have stopped going to church.

"If we could go back," Manigo said, "they would be strong mothers. My mother was. You don't spare the rod and spoil the child."

"Talk about it, sister," spoke out an elderly man up front to a few laughs.

Manigo illustrated her words with current events, using the example of the 17-year-old Fayetteville teen who poisoned her grandmother's food on Easter Sunday, according to authorities. The teenager has been charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder.

"It's happening all over," said Manigo, who wasn't mincing words in the cool of the sanctuary. "That's what's happening in our world today. The most crucial challenge of the strong mother is the rearing of a Godly child."

Following the program, Manigo was asked about her call for disciplinary measures in this time of political correctness. Many reject the notion of spanking, saying research indicates the negative effects from that form of punishment. Others advocate that spanking be abolished completely for juvenile transgressions.

"I speak from the heart. I speak from what God says - to spank them," the minister said. "I don't worry about it. I find when you speak the truth, I don't worry about it."

Outside, while heading to the car, 59-year-old Julius McNair said, "I agree with her."

DaMita Whitehead, 33, and one of the contestants aspiring to be the NAACP Mother of the Year, said she, too, agreed with Manigo.

"That's how I was raised," Whitehead said. "If it worked before, bring it back."

Meanwhile, Olivia Julia Graham, 74, who was representing Mount Sinai Baptist Church, was named the organization's 2014 Mother of the Year.

Graham raised $1,363 on behalf of the NAACP Fayetteville branch. She will represent the branch Saturday at the state competition in Greensboro.

"It's super. I'm a member of the organization," she said, after her crowning and walk down the aisle. "I think it is important we all participate."

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