President Bush today had the first meeting of his presidency with the NAACP, a group that stridently opposed him during his first term in office.
The NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's oldest African-American civil rights organization, has become increasingly partisan in recent years - and recently called the GOP "the dark underside of American culture."
The group also bought TV ads attacking then-candidate Bush in 2000
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"It was a very frank and a very open dialogue," outgoing NAACP boss Kweisi Mfume told reporters afterward. "We both have real differences."
The White House gave no description of the meeting, but press secretary Scott McClellan said the president had looked forward to it. "The president is always open to talking to people who want to work together on our common challenges and our shared priorities," he said.
Mfume last month sent Bush a letter congratulating him on his re-election and requested a head-to-head. The "surprise invitation" from Bush came late last week, said John White, NAACP's spokesman.
P.S.: Mfume, the Associated Press notes, once described Bush's black supporters as "ventriloquists' dummies."
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