NAACP Suspends Planned Compton Branch Election

In an extraordinary move, the national office of the NAACP has suspended today’s planned election of officers in the association’s Compton branch amid allegations that it has been targeted for takeover by Brotherhood Crusade President Danny Bakewell.

The action by the NAACP, which will hold a special local meeting Sunday, follows charges by branch President Royce Esters and others that Bakewell has organized a questionable membership drive in the local chapter and assembled a group of candidates for office with the hope of silencing a chapter that has sharply criticized his business dealings in Compton.

In an interview Friday, Esters said Bakewell is still angry at the chapter for publicly challenging his role in closing down a longtime black-owned restaurant in Compton this year. Then and now, critics--led by Esters--have charged that Bakewell undermined efforts to save Mr. J’s Family Restaurant and Sports Bar even as he portrayed himself as a champion of black-owned business in Southern California.

“I think people need to know about Danny Bakewell,” said Esters, who has been president of the Compton NAACP for six years. “He has no right to come in and try and throw us out because he is mad at me.”

Bakewell could not be reached for comment Friday and Brotherhood Crusade Vice President Ken Collins declined to respond to Esters’ charges.

“I am not going to beat up on Royce. I am not going to speak ill of him or the Compton branch of the NAACP,” said Collins, who is a candidate for its 17-member executive board.

While national officials of the NAACP were unavailable for comment, a memorandum sent Tuesday to the Compton branch confirmed the association’s decision to invoke its bylaws and suspend the scheduled election of officers. No new date for the elections was set.

In his memo, William H. Penn, national director of branch and field services for the NAACP, did not refer to any specific dispute in the Compton branch but advised that “problems” with the membership roster led to the decision to postpone the election.

“This will allow for a thorough review of the situation before rescheduling the election,” Penn wrote, adding that a special meeting of Compton’s executive board would be held Sunday. Penn is expected to attend that meeting.

His memo followed a lengthy letter sent by the Compton branch president to the NAACP’s national president and chief executive officer, Kweisi Mfume. In his letter, Esters said not only that Bakewell was behind a “hostile takeover” but that his efforts were being assisted by NAACP regional director Ernestine Peters, who was attending a conference Friday in Oregon and could not be reached for comment.

In his letter, Esters alleged that Peters actively aided a membership drive that had all the markings of a “conspiracy” to wrest away control of the Compton NAACP.

Not only was the volume of applications unprecedented, Esters said, but some of them were clearly questionable, with requests for membership filed by residents from as far away as Las Vegas.

“Ms. Peters has never in the past assisted residents from other cities with joining the Compton branch of the NAACP,” he wrote. “We find it quite unusual for her to provide her assistance at this time.”

When one flood of 229 new membership applications came in to the 300-member Compton branch, Esters wrote, both Peters and Collins alleged that the branch refused to accept them. But Esters denied that accusation and said the claim of a volunteer refusing to accept the applications also was impossible because the office is not staffed by anyone but himself.

In an interview, Esters said tensions over electing a new NAACP board for Compton reached the boiling point at a general membership meeting last month, when Compton police were called to quell angry outbursts over the legitimacy of new membership applications.

That session, he said, resulted in “chaos.” And, Esters said, it and the branch’s new conflict stem from a dispute between him and Bakewell that should have been resolved long ago. “It is all between Danny and I in this argument over Mr. J’s,” Esters said.

“[But] why would you want to destroy a whole branch because me and Danny went after each other?” he asked, arguing that they should be focusing on issues like Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action measure recently passed by state voters.

“I mean, African Americans going after each other like this. It doesn’t make sense.”