President Joe Biden to speak at NAACP dinner in Detroit
(CBS DETROIT) - President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak at the 69th annual NAACP Fight for Freedom Dinner in Detroit.
The dinner will be held at 5 p.m. on Sunday, May 19, at the Huntington Place. The Fight for Freedom Dinner launched in April 1965. It's one of the largest sit-down dinners, with about 10,000 guests and notable speakers.
Biden was also the event's keynote speaker in 2015.
The announcement comes on the same day that former President Donald Trump is scheduled to hold a campaign rally in Saginaw County.
Both Biden and Trump have visited the state over the past few months, as Michigan is a key battleground state in the 2024 election.
Before scheduling the May 1 rally, Trump gave a speech in Grand Rapids on April 2 in which he criticized Biden over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Biden visited Saginaw in March to get support from voters, as turning that county blue in 2020 helped him secure the state in that election. Saginaw has a high proportion of Black and union-affiliated voters. However, some African American community leaders were disappointed with Biden's visit. They said he skipped a planned visit to a Black church and didn't meet with enough Black community members.
A recent CBS News poll shows that Biden is gaining ground on Trump in the battleground state, with Biden at 51% of voters at Trump at 49%.
While third-party candidates typically poll better than they actually perform in the election, the poll found that the net gap between Biden and Trump is the same in Michigan with the presence of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but Kennedy has more interest from voters backing Trump.
