Leaders hope NAACP chief's exit won't hurt momentum

Leaders hope NAACP chief's exit won't hurt momentum

Monday, March 12, 2007
By Ervin Dyer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 
Pennsylvania NAACP leaders were shocked and disappointed by the resignation a week ago of national executive director Bruce Gordon, who served a short but robust 19 months.
Mr. Gordon mended strained relations with the Bush White House, drew in corporate supporters and hit the ground in a post-Katrina New Orleans, delivering hope and bottled water.
 
He also saw himself as a change agent and wanted to move toward more social service delivery when many say the civil rights advocacy championed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is not over.
 
There are reports that the timing of Mr. Gordon's exit imperils multimillion-dollar fund raising as the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group prepares for its centennial anniversary in 2009.
 
It also comes at a time when local officials and black social service groups say unity and a strong presence is needed to battle some of black America's most deeply entrenched woes: crime, declining educational achievement, HIV/AIDS and the growing incarceration rates of black males.
 
"I wish Gordon had stayed the course," said Richard Burton, a national board member and former NAACP leader in Allentown who now lives in Florida.
 
"I think things could have been turning around."
 
Mr. Burton said there were clashes with the 64-member board and with civil rights stalwart Julian Bond, its nine-year board chairman. But, said Mr Burton, "we have to look at making a change."
 
For outsiders, it may seem like a small quibble, but for a nearly 100-year-old organization to move away from the practices that built its legacy and into social services would be a seismic shift.
 
As an advocacy group, many of the gains of the civil rights movement can be traced to active participation by legions of NAACP members. It was their pounding of the streets and standing up to water hoses that helped usher in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a generation of school and employment opportunities that created a bigger black middle class.
 
Through it advocacy and public awareness the group believes it seared America's conscience on inequality and helped change a nation. That is the role it is hesitant to alter
 
Mr. Gordon acknowledged those efforts, but believed the social and racial gains have put America in a post-civil rights era. He wanted more social services such as job training and housing assistance programs to help close persistent racial disparities in wealth, education and incarceration
 
"If we don't engage in addressing the fundamental issues that, to me, represent the civil rights struggles of the 21st century, then we shouldn't exist," Mr. Gordon told The Associated Press.
 
NAACP chair Mr. Bond had other thoughts.
 
"We're not post-civil rights," said Mr. Bond, and lobbying and building a national awareness about racism is the way to bring about change. "The struggle continues," he said.
Mr. Gordon, 61, was a retired, successful telecommunications executive with Verizon who had no grassroots experience in NAACP leadership when he was unanimously chosen to be executive director in 2005.
 
However, his business acumen was hailed as a plus for the organization and it was hoped he would build the group's endowment, tighten fiscal oversight, grow membership and help heal a group divided by the resignation of the charismatic Kweisi Mfume, a former Maryland congressman who lead the group for 10 years.
 
Insiders have said Mr. Gordon was a mismatch from the start. Six weeks into his leadership, he grew frustrated with board decisions and wanted to resign. Others said he was not a good fit because he came out of corporate America and was not grounded in the old-school, foot-soldier marches for equality.
 
It was the same criticism hurled at Mr. Mfume when he assumed leadership, said Mr. Burton. "But executive director Kweisi came out of political life and people said he would not be a civil rights magnate, but he adapted."
 
The organization -- founded in 1909 partly to respond to lynchings -- has always been an advocate for social justice.
 
But times have changed, said Mr. Burton, who heads the NAACP's prison rights project and said perhaps the civil rights organization should be a combination of advocacy and social service.
 
There is a lot on the table, said Tom Smith, the Pennsylvania state president of the NAACP. "Obviously being 100 years old, we want to concentrate on our civil rights history, but we need a good solid program that brings new members on, too."
 
Mr. Smith, 58, lives in Bethlehem and has been state president for a year. Some of today's pressing social issues just could not be imagined in the 1960s, he said. "Now, we'll just have to wait and see which way we go."
 
In fact, seven years ago, board members worked with Harvard University to re-evaluate its mission and decided not to change its strategy.
 
The advocacy model continues to work, said Mr. Burton, of Florida, adding that other groups, including Latinos in their recent protests over immigration, have borrowed from the NAACP.
 
"You can't get too modern, lest [you] forget where you're at," said Mr. Burton, underscoring that "the old work is what got black people out of chains and bondage."
 
But 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, a legal decision that many see as an opening that ushered in more equality for African Americans, and with 1.2 million blacks in jail, "we have to look at what is not working and do something," said Mr. Burton.
 
"I never met Mr. Gordon," said Pittsburgh NAACP executive director M. Gayle Moss, "but I'm disappointed by the resignation. He was just getting started."
 
Ms. Moss said today there are some tough issues to deal with and she believes the organization must be more proactive nationally.
 
"When we advocated for voting rights, everybody knew what we were doing. We need someone who can take an issue and beat at it until it's done," she said.
 
She is hoping the search for a new executive director will not rob the organization of momentum as it heads toward its centennial.
 
"We need someone who can deal with the issues of the day," said Ms. Moss. "The prison system, HIV and health, education and crime -- these are tough issues. And, on top of that we still have racism."
(The Associated Press contributed to this report. Ervin Dyer can be reached at edyer@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1410. )