NAACP Labor Awards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

James Felton Keith Receives 2026 Benjamin L. Hooks Keeper of the Flame Award from the NAACP National Labor Committee

Award recognizes leadership at the intersection of civil rights, labor rights, economic justice, and the future of data as labor

NEW YORK, NY — June 2026 — The Keith Institute and Inclusion Score Inc. are proud to announce that James Felton Keith (JFK) has been selected as the 2026 Benjamin L. Hooks Keeper of the Flame Award recipient, to be honored by the NAACP National Labor Committee at the 56th Annual NAACP Labor Awards Luncheon during the 117th NAACP National Convention in Chicago.

The award recognizes exceptional service advancing the objectives of the NAACP and the labor movement. In nominating Keith, Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander wrote that he has “spent his career advancing the principle that civil rights and labor rights cannot be separated,” and has helped show that “working people create value in more ways than the old categories capture and that justice must keep pace with that reality.”

He is the author of Data Is Labor (2024), recognized by MyData Global in Helsinki, Finland with the 2025 Thought Leadership Award, and Your Data, Their Wealth: The Price of Human Input to the AI Economy (2026), which extends that argument by showing how human input into the AI economy can be measured and valued. Keith’s nomination by University of Georgia Professor Emerita, Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander Esq. also cites his founding of The Data Union (2015), the Basic Income March (2019), advisory work with labor-aligned institutions and unions including UNI Global Union and SEIU, and his leadership as Chairperson of the International ISO-30415 Standard for Diversity & Inclusion, the world’s first certifying body in workforce resilience. Keith is the Founder of Techstars venture-backed Inclusion Score Inc., a New York Corporation.

“Benjamin L. Hooks understood that civil rights and labor rights inseparable,” said James Felton Keith. “I receive this honor in that spirit. My work has been about making visible the value people create in systems that too often call us users while using us. This award is a reminder that the future of labor rights must include the digital evidence of our lives, our personal and communal data. We must own it.”

The nomination further recognizes Keith’s civic leadership, noting that he has helped communities understand “the relationship between democracy, economic power, and human dignity” and has consistently worked to help ordinary people see themselves “not as spectators, but as stakeholders with voice and standing.” It also highlights his career-long effort to defend and expand civil rights in “workplaces, standards systems, governance structures, economic frameworks, and the digital marketplace.”

This recognition comes at a moment of growing national and global debate over artificial intelligence, labor rights, and who should benefit from the value generated by human participation in digital systems. Through The Keith Institute and Inclusion Score Inc., Keith has advanced a framework for understanding data as labor and for developing new models of collective bargaining, institutional accountability, and economic participation in the AI economy.

Keith is available for interviews, keynote talks, op-eds, panels, and strategy conversations on:

• the future of labor in the AI economy

• data as labor and collective bargaining

• civil rights and worker rights in digital systems

• institutional accountability, inclusion, and standards

• ownership, economic dignity, and the future of human value

Media Contacts: The Keith Institute / Inclusion Score Inc.

tr@inclusionscore.io , andy@inclusionscore.io