Endorsement of Thomas Sparks Rift in NAACP

In a bitter rift within the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People issued an ultimatum Thursday to officials of its Compton branch: Either retract a vote supporting President Bush’s latest nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court by noon today or resign en masse.

But leaders of the small Compton branch vowed to continue their support of Clarence Thomas, a black conservative appeals court judge, despite NAACP policy requiring local chapters to adhere to decisions by national leaders or risk losing their charters.

The Baltimore-based national office last week announced its official opposition to Thomas’ elevation to the high court, citing his record on civil rights. The opposition was seen as significant because the NAACP was the first major civil rights group to go on record against Bush’s nominee to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall.

The 150-member Compton branch is the only one of the 5,000 NAACP local groups to take issue with the national leadership.

Some of the branch’s board members promised Thursday to file a lawsuit, if necessary, to maintain their independence. They also threatened to call on other branches to withhold money from the national office and boycott national meetings.

Royce Esters, president of the Compton branch, contended that a majority of black people support Thomas, and he accused the national NAACP officers of being high-handed and insensitive in imposing their views on local chapters.

“I can’t abandon ship” on the issue of Thomas, Esters said. “That would be cowardice. If I retracted the vote, there would be nobody in this branch.”

The Rev. Walter Goodin, the branch’s first vice president, said, “We’re going to stand pat. We’re voting our consciences.

“We can’t concede to the whims of the national.”

That defiance has gained support among some area residents who bombarded Esters on Thursday with phone calls of support and offers to join the branch. Also, the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality said he would give memberships in his New York-based organization to anyone expelled from the NAACP’S Compton branch.

“I will offer them aid and comfort,” CORE national Chairman Roy Innis told The Times. “I think what they have done is heroic and reflective of the true sentiments of black America, and it’s high time.

“The NAACP leadership were afraid to have a vote by the rank and file on the Thomas question because the image of a monolith (of opinion) in black America has been a fraud, and that vote would have exposed that fraud.” CORE supports Thomas’ nomination, calling it “one of the best picks that the President could have made.”

Esters said the Compton branch backed Thomas on July 20 after those present at a regular membership meeting brought up the subject and insisted on voting on it. The vote, he said, was 32 to 0 for Thomas. The branch issued a press release announcing the vote.

Thomas’ nomination had been hotly debated earlier that month at the NAACP’s national convention in Houston, both among the 64-member national board of directors and the 15,000 delegates. Both the board and the delegates were split on the matter, said several delegates.

Instead of voting on the matter then, the national board decided to wait until it had looked further into Thomas’ background and had a face-to-face meeting with him.

The Compton branch had already held its own vote by the time the national board had prepared a report on Thomas’ civil rights record as chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and had voted 49 to 1 against his Supreme Court nomination. The national leaders alleged that Thomas has been used by powerful conservative groups to help erode gains made by the civil rights movement.

The national leaders did not learn of the Compton vote until this week, said James Williams, spokesman for the national office.

Benjamin Hooks, the NAACP’s executive director, was traveling Thursday, Williams said, and was not available for comment.

In a written statement, William Penn, director of branch and field services for the national NAACP, said the Compton branch’s action directly contradicts the “constitution, bylaws and policies” of the organization.

“Once the national NAACP adopts a position on a national issue, all branches are required to adhere to it,” Penn wrote. “Individuals are, of course, free to express their positions as individuals. However, positions contrary to that articulated by the national NAACP cannot be issued in the name of a NAACP branch.”

Penn’s statement said the Compton branch has only two alternatives: The support of Thomas must be retracted or the president and other board members must resign.

Failure to do either, the statement said, would result in the filing of internal charges against the branch leaders and their “expulsion, suspension or removal” for conduct not in the interest of the organization.

Joe Duff, president of the 5,000-member Los Angeles branch of the NAACP, said the Compton branch could also lose its NAACP charter.

Duff dismissed threats by the branch’s leaders to sow dissension among other NAACP branches, saying Compton’s membership is minuscule.

Showdowns between the branches and the national NAACP, Duff said, invariably lead to the branch bending to its will.

He cited an attempt by the Los Angeles branch to organize a 1984 boycott against the makers of Coors beer without approval of the national NAACP. When the national leaders learned of the boycott, he said, they quickly expressed their disapproval.

In the end, Duff said, “We cooperated with them.”

In the case of the Compton branch, he said, “the national clearly has the upper hand” because the constitution is clear and “the courts don’t want to run the NAACP.”

The national organization’s stance, according to those in the Compton branch, amounts to reign by dictatorship.

“I can’t see them dictating to us or any other branch. I think they are wrong,” said Gale Shannon, who recently was elected to the Compton branch board of directors.

Shannon said he has no intention of resigning. Similar sentiment was expressed by board member Emily Hart Holifield.

As the board members waited for a television interview at Esters’ tax consulting office Thursday, Carolyn Harris, a California State University employee, dropped in to show her support.

“I want to show that all black people don’t think alike,” Harris said as she filled out a check for a family membership in the branch.

BACKGROUND

On July 1, President Bush announced his nomination of Clarence Thomas, a 43-year-old black conservative appeals court judge, to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, the U.S. Supreme Court’s foremost advocate of civil rights for 25 years. The nomination set the stage for what is expected to be a stormy Senate confirmation battle next month. The NAACP announced its opposition to the nomination on July 31, citing what leaders said was Thomas’ poor civil rights record--including opposition to job quotas, busing for desegregation and equal pay for women. The NAACP has taken special interest in who replaces Marshall because he is closely linked to liberal causes and as a young lawyer worked on some of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s most significant civil rights cases, including Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 which declared unconstitutional segregation of public schools.