Cawthorne Quits Chamber After 4 Months

Herb Cawthorne, the charismatic black leader and former president of the San Diego Urban League, has resigned as vice president of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce after little more than four months on the job, Chamber President Lee Grissom said Friday night.

Cawthorne tendered his resignation in a letter Wednesday to Grissom in which he explained that he intends “to become the chairman and chief executive officer of the Black Federation” of San Diego.

But the Black Federation’s executive director, Vernon Sukumu, a close friend of Cawthorne’s, said Friday that Cawthorne had not joined his organization.

“I don’t know about him leaving the Chamber, but he hasn’t joined the Black Federation,” Sukumu said. He declined comment on whether a position had been offered to Cawthorne. Cawthorne could not be reached for comment.

The resignation was the second surprise departure in six months for Cawthorne, who suddenly quit his post at the Urban League on June 7, reportedly under pressure after an audit questioned his use of League funds. Neither the Urban League nor Cawthorne has ever publicly explained why he quit.

But Grissom insisted Friday night that Cawthorne’s resignation from the Chamber was unrelated to his difficulties with the Urban League, and that, despite the brevity of his tenure, Cawthorne was not being forced out of his job.

“I’ll tell you, if the thing with the Black Federation doesn’t work out, Herb Cawthorne has a position on my staff tomorrow,” Grissom said. “I need talent like that. I need intelligence like that. I need energy like that.

“I did the most thorough background check on him that I have ever done with anyone I have brought on the staff,” Grissom continued, adding that he “found nothing of substance” in the circumstances of Cawthorne’s departure from the Urban League to discourage him from hiring the 42-year-old executive.

But Friday’s announcement added another chapter to a troubled six-month passage in the career of a man who quickly made himself San Diego’s most visible black leader after taking over the helm of the Urban League in August, 1987. Speculation about what drove Cawthorne from the Urban League has followed him, despite his efforts to put the matter behind him.

Friday’s announcement of Cawthorne’s resignation came the same day that The Times revealed that the Urban League has demanded that Cawthorne repay about $13,000--a sum Cawthorne is refusing to pay--and may take legal action against him.

Grissom said the news report and Cawthorne’s resignation were coincidental, citing the letter’s Jan. 3 date and the fact that Cawthorne had asked for a private meeting Tuesday with Grissom.

According to one source, the fiery Cawthorne has had differences with Grissom during his short tenure at the downtown business organization.

“If there was a problem that we had, it may have been access to me, because I’m surrounded all the time,” Grissom said. “The time I was able to spend with him was excellent.”

In his letter, Cawthorne wrote: “After much soul-searching, I regret to say that I am resigning from the Chamber effective in about 30 days.” Grissom read parts of the letter to a reporter.

“It is imperative that I struggle to complete the work that brought me here in the first place,” Cawthorne added in a later passage, referring to his efforts to help minorities.

Six weeks after his departure from the Urban League, Cawthorne announced the formation of the Cawthorne Co., a for-profit development firm “with a social philosophy.” Less than six weeks later, he was made a vice president at the Chamber, replacing Dorothy Migdal, who died last year after 12 years in the post.

Well-spoken and possessed of boundless energy, Cawthorne inherited a financially unstable Urban League in 1987, and was credited with substantially boosting fund raising. Perennially rumored as a San Diego City Council candidate, he was frequently in the spotlight while with the Urban League, leading well-publicized marches of mourning for the victims of gang violence.

Just three months into his job with the Urban League, Cawthorne called for a boycott of San Diego as a convention site after votes stripped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s name off a major downtown thoroughfare. The boycott was called off a little more than two weeks later, after Cawthorne said he had negotiated with local corporate leaders a plan to raise money for a monument to King. That statue remains unconstructed today.

Cawthorne, who headed the bitter, unsuccessful effort to win passage of a City Council-sponsored growth-control ballot measure in 1988, is co-chairman this year of an organization working for voter approval of another growth initiative written primarily by the building industry. The San Diego 2000 Committee is attempting to place the measure on the June ballot.

Grissom, who said that Cawthorne’s battles with the Urban League center on his use of Super Bowl tickets for fund raising and the acquisition of a painting, claimed that Cawthorne’s resignation from the League was largely “a policy question” over whether Cawthorne or the board of directors was going to hold the day-to-day responsibility for running the organization.

Grissom said that Cawthorne was earning $40,000 annually for a half-time position that allowed him to continue operating his small firm developing housing in largely black Southeast San Diego. But he said Cawthorne was putting in seven, eight and nine hours each day.

Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this report.