By Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Board Columnist

The first African-American mayor of Philadelphia, Miss., told the NAACP of Kansas City today that hate-speech must end.

"We must take the opportunity in this season to stop propagating and passing along words that separate," Mayor James A. Young said at the Centennial Freedom Fund Luncheon of the Kansas City Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Philadelphia, Miss., is infamously known as the city where three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were slain in 1964. Young credited "the ultimate sacrifice" that they made while trying to register people to vote for his election in July.

The change the civil rights workers pushed for gradually has taken hold.

Young joked that a journalist asked him how he would "keep from becoming too black."

The hundreds of people at the luncheon at the Westin Crown Center Hotel laughed when Young replied, "It's too late for that." He said as mayor he is as comfortable speaking to the Rotary as he is speaking at the NAACP, which is a first for Philadelphia.

He said that like President Barack Obama he did not plan to squander the opportunity to bring people together. He said black people want the same chance as whites to send their children to the best schools, get the best health care for their parents, earn a decent wage and live in clean safe neighborhoods.

"Just give us the opportunity," he said. "That's what civil rights is all about."

Young said there is no time for the nation to rest.

"What we do today as a state and as a nation will either make us grow or make us die," he said. "This is our time."

Several awards also were given out at the NAACP luncheon, which had a theme of "NAACP 100 Years: Bold Dreams - Big Victories." The Velma E. Woodson Outstanding Leadership Award went to Barbara Tate; the Carl R. Johnson Humanitarian Award, Sonny Gibson; the Lucile H. Bluford Special Achievement Award, Stacey Daniels-Young; and the Harold L. Holiday Sr. Civil Rights Award, Bert Berkley.