CNN's Blackin America premieres July 22-July 23 8p ET

Benjamin Todd Jealous
Special to CNN

As the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People prepares to celebrate its Centennial in New York, the city of its birth, I'm confident that we as a nation have turned an important corner on the long road toward racial and economic equality for all Americans.

Established in 1909 by a core group of black and white Americans, the NAACP's mission has been clarified and sharpened during our first 100 years. We have covered a lot of ground in the march to improve the lives of millions of Americans, but there remains much more work to be done.

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CNNMoney.com
Dow Jones

Wells Fargo Corp. (WFC) and HSBC Holdings PLC (HBC) are the target of separate lawsuits being filed on Friday by the NAACP, which alleges the banks were engaged in "systematic, institutionalized racism" in their subprime mortgage lending businesses.

The lawsuits, which the NAACP said would be filed in U.S. District Court in California, allege that African-American homeowners were frequently steered into mortgages with higher interest rates than other borrowers with similar credit histories.

"These banks are getting billions in bailout money yet think they can get away with business as usual," Austin Tighe, co-lead counsel for the NAACP, said in an interview Thursday evening.

Predatory lending and other practices, he continued, "are legally actionable and more importantly, morally reprehensible."

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Wendi C. Thomas
Commercialappeal.com

A century ago today, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded.

Despite the "C" in the acronym of the premier civil rights organization and despite its commitment to equality for "colored" people, white people were always among the committed.

Just as black children need role models like those found in the NAACP's founder and intellectual Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and Maxine Smith, former executive secretary of the Memphis NAACP branch, white children also need to know that their history includes civil rights stalwarts like the NAACP's founder and first president, Moorfield Storey, and locals like Jocelyn Wurzburg and Mary Goodman Hohenburg, now Mary Mhoon Walker.

After all, only two of the six NAACP founders listed at naacp.org were black - anti-lynching journalist Ida B. Wells and DuBois. The rest were white.

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Roland S. Martin
360° Contributor
www.rolandsmartin.com

DETROIT – The Detroit NAACP has already set a world record for having the largest sit-down annual dinner in the world – I believe it was 10,000 – and this year is no different.

According to the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the chapter, more than 8,000 people have bought tickets this year, and suffice to say that the room is packed.

To put it in perspective there are six head tables assigned by color – yellow, black and white, green, red and the blue, which is considered the main table.

The stars are also out in full force, including: Hill Harper; Anthony Anderson; Vivica A. Fox; Morris Chestnut; Judge Greg Mathis; Michigan Gov. Jenniger Granholm; Michigan U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin; Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick; former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer; and CNN's Soledad O'Brien.

I'm typing on my BlackBerry, but the photo I'll send soon will show you the expansive room.

The room is hot because the guest speaker is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It has been a busy day for him; earlier he preached two worship services at Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, pastored by the Rev. Frederick D. Haynes III.

Well, I'm sitting one seat over from where he'll be speaking so you'll get a taste of what he had to say. I also have my Flip Video camera so we hope to have video as well!

Editor's note: Read other blogs from the 360° team of contributors at cnn.com/360