NAACP Chief Discovers It’s Hard to Please All the People All the Time : Civil rights: In taking the helm last year, Benjamin Chavis set out to inject new life into the group. He wound up splitting himself down the middle.

The demands flew at Benjamin Chavis under a hot summer sun at an outdoor rally here. With sweat soaking his suit collar, he tried to placate reporters, senior citizens, NAACP officials on cellular phones and his 2-year-old daughter, who was demanding her daddy.

He may be able to please everyone at rallies, but it is nearly impossible in the world of civil rights. This was Lesson No. 1 for the new head of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

In taking the NAACP helm eight months ago, Chavis set out to inject new life into the civil rights group. He split himself down the middle, working with offenders and the offended, on each issue he came across.

That drew critics.

Conservatives branded him liberal. Liberals labeled him conservative. Old people said he’s too young to have historical perspective. Young people complained that, at 45, he’s too old to sense the future they face.

Most people, Chavis said in an interview, simply don’t know what to make of him.

“We have a responsibility to make sure we’re not just kicking up dust. That’s been one of the problems,” Chavis said. “A lot of people go out here and stage publicity stunts and then nothing derives from it after the public attention has gone away. Brothers and sisters want a change.”

His first order of business was to make the NAACP more visible in poor communities, where the group was considered out of touch. Then he moved to the corporate arena, in search of money to build an endowment that would keep the NAACP out of a financial hole.

He has pulled together a motley array of politicians, businesses, street gangs and civil rights outsiders like Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan, who was considered untouchable for his criticisms of Jews.

“Prior to his selection, I don’t think the people of urban America had as much entree to the NAACP’s power as we have now,” said Carl Upchurch, head of the Council for Urban Peace and Justice, which spearheads a national truce effort among street gangs.

The inner-city effort disturbed some on the NAACP’s board of directors, which was leery of using NAACP resources to aid the gang truce.

“I think he’s being met with severe challenges from his board. That will limit his ultimate involvement with what we’re trying to do,” Upchurch said. “But he personally has maintained all along that he supports us. That’s a starting point.”

In trying to please his board, Chavis created an unhappy public, some of whom felt he had tied his hands by agreeing to work in tandem with board chairman William Gibson.

“The NAACP simply can’t operate effectively with Siamese twins at its helm,” wrote USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham. “The prevailing mood is that Chavis, in agreeing to power-wielding . . . , William Gibson’s terms of power-sharing, offered up his manhood as well,” wrote editors of One, a publication for black professionals in Washington.

Chavis denied that Gibson restrains his leadership. He said there was “a lot of rancor” between Gibson and the previous executive director, Benjamin Hooks, to which people apparently had grown accustomed.

“Now, people are lamenting that there’s no power struggle,” Chavis said. “Dr. Gibson and I have engaged in serious discussion on a number of issues. The fact that, at the end of the discussion, we are on the same page is significant, healthy. I don’t see that as weakness.”

Chavis also is battling rumors that his relationship with Jesse Jackson, with whom he had competed for the NAACP post, is unfriendly and uncooperative.

He and Jackson are congenial, Chavis said. They have displayed no outward signs of the contentiousness that rose between them over the NAACP job before Jackson quit the campaign out of discomfort with a proposal to broaden Gibson’s powers.

“We are fellow freedom fighters,” Chavis said. “I believe we have established a good working relationship. There is no sense of competition or antagonism between us.

“Some people salivate at the thought of fights. I don’t. The African-American community is better served when African-American leaders stop fighting each other and work together.”

Jackson questioned Chavis’ maneuver in striking a $1-billion, 5-year agreement for jobs and minority-owned franchises with the parent company of the Denny’s restaurant chain, after allegations of racism by the restaurant surfaced.

Accusations that Denny’s served black patrons so slowly that it effectively denied service are winding through federal courts. Chavis’ early dealings with Denny’s ran counter to Jackson’s traditional strategy: Side with the victim in court, and make up with the offender later.

Chavis insisted the NAACP has not bargained away its ability to criticize Denny’s. “To have an agreement with the NAACP does not give any corporation immunity from our scrutiny and, if necessary, confrontation,” he said.

Jackson said he and Chavis have “operational unity,” and are not disagreeable. “We work together and share concerns,” Jackson said. “The right thing to do is to have functional, operational unity. The last thing to do is attack each other.”

“I believe in unity. I really believe in it,” Chavis said. “But I also know unity does not happen by osmosis. There are both external as well as internal contradictions that have to be overridden.”

But most of the time, Chavis is alone on that unity stump, most recently at November’s gang peace summit in Chicago.

Chavis tried to arrange a private meeting between himself, Jackson, Farrakhan and Congressional Black Caucus chairman Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) to follow up on their pledge to work together.

There were private meetings, between Chavis and Jackson, then Chavis and Farrakhan. Jackson left without joining the meeting with Farrakhan; Mfume was not there.

Farrakhan told the crowd at Mosque Maryam that he respects Chavis’ independence.

“I know I can unite with Dr. Chavis,” Farrakhan said. “We’re not attaching ourselves to labels. We’re attaching ourselves to principles. Our unity is not a sham. It’s real.”