Reinvigorated NAACP Vows to Fight ‘National Scourge of Intolerance’

Under new leadership and with fewer financial problems, the NAACP opened its 87th annual convention Saturday with a pledge to tackle new threats to the empowerment of blacks.

“It is clearly time to bring a new sense of compassion and a new sense of understanding to our nation,” Kweisi Mfume, the NAACP’s president and chief executive officer, said at a news conference. “Few organizations are more ready, willing and able to help create that new climate than the NAACP.”

He said the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, which last year suffered from a lack of leadership, internal strife and a multimillion-dollar debt, has been renewed by the need to fight the “national scourge of intolerance and insensitivity.” The most prominent examples of that scourge, he said, have been fires at churches across the country, including several in North Carolina.

Mfume said the fires and the “unwarranted attacks” by the Supreme Court on minority voting districts and affirmative action programs will be discussed at the convention, which runs through Thursday.

A session on Wednesday, the day President Clinton is expected to visit, will focus on the church fires.

Bob Dole, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has yet to accept an invitation to address the gathering on Tuesday.

Mfume, a former Maryland congressman now four months into his tenure as head of the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, has good news to share with members when he speaks to them Monday.

The organization’s debt has been reduced by more than half since Mfume came aboard in February--from $3.2 million to about $1.5 million as of May, he said. Figures expected next week are likely to show the debt at slightly less than $1 million, he added.

Myrlie Evers-Williams, chairwoman of the 64-member board of directors, credited the organization’s membership with the dramatic turnaround.

“That says an awful lot about the faith and trust that people and our branches have in the organization,” Evers-Williams said at the news conference. “It has been an exciting time . . . perhaps one of the most challenging times that this organization has had.”

Mfume said a combination of factors helped reduce the debt, including contributions from individual donors and corporations and efforts by the organization to tightly control spending.

Evers-Williams said the NAACP earned nearly $400,000 from its recently televised Image Awards. It also expects to make money from the convention, as it did during last year’s gathering in Minneapolis, she said.

Mfume and Evers-Williams spoke optimistically about the future of the organization as it gears up for the November elections.

Frank Jordan, president of the California State Conference of the NAACP, said he sensed a new feeling of hope.