The NAACP convention has been a critical campaign stop for Republican candidates to gain Black votes

HOUSTON-Mitt Romney will address the NAACP’s national convention in Houston. According to the Romney campaign, he will speak on July 11th. President Barack Obama also spoke at the organization’s 2009 100th convention, and in 2010,  First Lady Michelle Obama gave a keynote address.

Relations between previous GOP nominees and the country’s largest civil rights group have been somewhat more fraught. George W. Bush addressed the NAACP during his 2000 bid; he went on to decline the group’s invitations for five straight years, citing his “basically nonexistent” relationship with its leaders. He did not address the group again until 2006. The previous GOP nominee, Bob Dole, made headlines in 1996 when he declined the NAACP’s invitation and accused the group of “trying to set me up.”