Besides working at UTA and serving as NAACP president — which she says is nearly a full-time job, without compensation — she attends school. Since the fall of 2004, she has pursued a master's degree in business management at the University of Phoenix.

"I thought it was a good thing to do," she says. Her evenings are filled with classes, papers and research. "I sneak in a little NAACP work in the evenings," she says.

And that is about all she reveals about herself.

What she is eager to do is send e-mail to a reporter containing a couple of "articles" about herself, one of which is a puff piece written for AdNewsonline.com that begins, "When Jeanetta Williams met President Nelson Mandela, he wept as he shook her hand and thanked her for the good work she is doing with the NAACP."

Later, the unidentified writer makes this grandiose statement: "She stands for justice, opportunity, goodness in all and equality. Her belief is pure and grants power in all she does."

Upon request, Williams riffs through a list of her accomplishments while in office.

She led efforts to change the name of Human Rights Day in Utah to Martin Luther King Holiday. "It was my idea," she says. "I contacted legislators to get sponsors. There was a lot of lobbying late at night."

She gave her support to a successful effort to name a street in West Jordan after the late Rosa Parks, as well as other streets around the valley. She persuadedconvinced Parks herself to visit Salt Lake City a few years ago to receive the chapter's Rosa Parks Award.

"She didn't like to travel to cold areas in the winter, but I kept being persistent," Williams says. "She kept saying, 'Let me think about it.' I kept calling her back. I told her about the mountains and scenery. Lo and behold, when she came we had the inversion. She stayed an extra day because it was my birthday, and she took me to dinner and gave me gifts and a card and flowers. I talked to her for hours at a time."

Williams, who served on the NAACP's national board of directors from 1996-2002, says that under her leadership the NAACP's Salt Lake chapter has filed class-action lawsuits against Fruit Heights, Bluffdale and Summit County over zoning ordinances because "those areas have large lots and there is no affordable housing." She says her office fields 10 to 15 calls, e-mails and letters a day with complaints of racism. Williams says her office monitors prisons, housing, education and employment, looking for discrimination.

Recently, she undertook the high-profile case of Alvin Itula, who died after being Tasered by police.

Williams says she would give Utah a "D" for the way it handles discrimination "because, for instance, a person filing a discrimination lawsuit in employment has no opportunity of winning a case in Utah because the judges favor the employer. And there is a glass ceiling.