By Shirley Valverde, Diana Romero, and Thomas Le
Naomi Rainey-Pierson is a woman who has become synonymous with Long Beach community service, civil rights, and equality. She is president of the Long Beach Branch NAACP and was born in Mississippi during the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement. Naomi began her involvement in the organization as a pre-teen, continuing her service into her senior life. Since the age of fourteen, she has been a fighter for social justice, women’s rights, and voting. She watched the women of her family and community take voting literacy tests and fail, and sought to change that. She provided a platform to educate citizens of color, especially women of color, regarding their voting rights and its importance.
Naomi has been involved with organizations and programs, such as the local and national NAACP, and the U.S. Census. Many of the committees she has worked with focus on community coordination, criminal justice, women’s rights, education, youth, veterans affairs, the press, labor, economic development, healthcare, political action, and religious affairs. Naomi has designed, introduced, and implemented programs for these committees at the local and national levels.
Naomi has successfully and productively managed the Office of President for the Long Beach Branch NAACP. In her role, she has implemented the NAACP’s national Back-to-School/ Stay-in-School Program to promote graduation, school attendance, and a better learning environment free from education-related racial and ethnic disparities. For over fifteen years, Naomi has maintained the First-Time Homebuyers Program for people of color that are renting, new teachers, and individuals with low credit scores. Furthermore, her efforts provided the necessary training to provide people with the skills to raise their credit scores, improving their ability for first-time home ownership. She further oversaw the branch’s distinguished Law Day Program that has been recognized numerous times by the American Bar Association. STEAM and STEM programs were brought in by Naomi to improve accessibility and involvement in science, technology, engineering mathematics and the arts for young women and youth of color.
Under her leadership, the Long Beach Branch NAACP has won thirty-two Thalheimer Awards- the NAACP’s top award given to branches and units for outstanding achievements. There are over two thousand branches; only twenty-seven are recognized each year.
Her accomplishments do not end there. California State University Long Beach named a dorm in her honor and in recognition of her support for low-income college students. In addition, she is a Distinguished Alumna and received and Honorary Doctorate in 2019. She was recognized in the Los Angeles Times for her voice against police brutality in the wake of the Marcella Byrd case. She has continued to fund cancer research and is a former Vice President of Programs and decade-long member of the fundraising committee for the Long Beach American Cancer Society.
Naomi shies from recognition. Even still she remains well-recognized for her local, state, and national efforts in civil rights and philanthropy.
Julie Bartolotto, Project Director
