NAACP Spotlight on Compton Gives Branch a Surge of Energy

Royce Winston Esters had barely stepped out of his house on Almond Street in Compton when the greetings began.

“Hey there, Roy,” one passerby shouted to Esters, who was dressed in rumpled jeans, California Squash loafers and a white T-shirt lettered with the slogan “Preparing a New Generation for the Struggle.”

“Saw you on television last night.”

Minutes later, an old friend pulled up in his pickup truck. Then four young men stopped to joke and chat.

The attention was not unusual. Esters, president of the Compton branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, seemed to know everyone on his bungalow-lined street in Compton, where he or members of his family have lived for 36 years.

This time, though, something was different. He was being trailed by Elaine Thompson, treasurer of the Compton branch of the NAACP, a sheaf of membership applications in her hand.

Thompson was taking advantage of national publicity last week that catapulted the local organization from a small, obscure group of 150 to 200 members to a force with which to be reckoned.

Less than a year ago, the branch was lucky if five people showed up for a regular meeting, Esters and others said. But since last week, when its break with national leadership over the endorsement of Clarence Thomas for the U.S. Supreme Court became public, it has been deluged with phone calls of support and requests for membership.

Now branch leaders are brimming with ideas about not only revitalizing their local chapter, but also making it and Compton models of economic self-help for blacks.

Although there is some dissension within the branch’s membership, elected leaders say the group is in the forefront of much-needed change in the priorities of the civil rights movement.

They believe that the movement needs to refocus its energies on economic self-help for black people, rather than reliance on government programs and affirmative action.

At issue in the dispute between the Compton branch and leaders of the national NAACP was whether the branch would have to rescind a vote to endorse Thomas, a conservative black federal appeals court judge and President Bush’s choice to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall.

The local chapter took its vote of support July 20. The NAACP national board of directors voted Aug. 1 to oppose Thomas because of his opposition to affirmative action programs and his alleged failure to firmly enforce civil rights laws when he was chairman of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The board then ordered branch officials to rescind their vote by noon last Friday or resign.

The threat led to criticism of the NAACP leadership from around the nation, including from the White House and at least one other civil rights group. Half an hour before the deadline, the national office backed off.

Nothing had to be rescinded. No one had to resign. The only condition imposed by NAACP Executive Director Benjamin L. Hooks was that the branch leaders refrain from promoting Thomas’ nomination in the name of the NAACP, a term to which they agreed.

Most of the branch’s 15 board members acknowledged that their views do not reflect those of all the branch members--the unanimous vote to endorse Thomas involved only 32 people--but by all accounts, they form the core of the group’s most active members and have enough backing to set the tone of the branch.

Even before the Thomas controversy, changes were taking place at the Compton NAACP branch. In December, all but one of the officials were replaced in a regularly scheduled biannual election.

The new officers have breathed new life into a group whose previous leaders had allowed the branch to stagnate, some members said.

“Before, the people tended to go to sleep,” said Helen Henson, a hair salon operator who is in charge of political action for the branch. Esters, she said, “has a new vision and inspires the rest of us.”

Thompson, who has been a member of the branch for three years, said it “really didn’t have any clear-cut projects” before this year.

“We hosted one state meeting at Compton College,” she said. “I don’t even recall us ever having a membership drive.”

Willis Curry, whom Esters succeeded as president and who is second vice president, acknowledged that the 37-year-old branch had been in decline for years because, he said, of the general decline of interest among blacks in civil rights and groups like the NAACP.

Young blacks, he said, do not know the history of organization and middle-class people “have convinced themselves they got where they are by themselves.”

Since January, however, according to Esters, the Compton branch’s membership has increased by as many as 80. The branch has also retired a $3,000 debt to the Baltimore-based national NAACP office, said the branch’s first vice president, the Rev. Walter Goodin.

The group meets monthly in a space provided free by Founders National Bank on Compton Boulevard, as it had before. The branch has an office space donated by the city, but it is too small to be used for anything except storage.

Long before the July 20 vote on the Thomas nomination and the resulting furor, Esters said, the branch had begun projects--such as mediation efforts between the employees and operators of a local hotel--that he and Goodin hope will make the branch more visible.

Esters said board members are formulating economic programs that they hope will bring new enterprises into Compton and provide jobs instead of leaving the jobless to rely on welfare or other government programs.

One idea is to find ways to privately finance the projects of black entrepreneurs who would employ others.

The approach is not new among black people, Esters said, but he thinks traditional civil rights groups have drifted away from it and focused on demanding more and better-funded social programs.

“When they wouldn’t let black people into white colleges, we built our own,” said Esters. When they wouldn’t let us in sports leagues we formed our own with black owners and managers.

“If we could do that then, with all the other barriers we had to face, imagine what we could do now.”

Race-based affirmative action programs in large white-owned businesses are valuable primarily to the middle class, who have the backgrounds to land such jobs, he said.

“What about the poor people who haven’t had the resources that the middle class have had?” Esters asked.

Such views infuriate some members of the Compton branch, who said they did not attend the July 20 meeting because they did not know that the branch would vote on the Thomas nomination.

One 20-year member said Thomas’ stand against affirmative action programs “alone is enough to oppose him.”

“That’s what Martin Luther King died for. I think Royce Esters should resign,” said Mae Thomas, who is not related to the Supreme Court nominee.

Some observers say such divisions within the NAACP and among blacks in general--a recent Gallup Poll showed that 57% of them support Thomas’ nomination--do not benefit either side.

Byran Jackson, a professor of political science at Cal State Los Angeles, said the debate over self-help versus social programs, in particular, is a “very destructive kind of debate.”

“I don’t think anyone in the (national) NAACP would argue against self-help programs,” he said. “It’s a question of priorities and where you are going to put your resources.

“But to argue self-help and independence and to ignore the institutional racism in this country in every facet of our lives is a very narrow way to look at the problem.

“You can’t erase history and the history of black people in this country has been discrimination,” he said. “Who’s going to address it if not the NAACP?”