NAACP Chief Hits ‘Fixation’ Over Thomas

The head of the NAACP has had enough of the picketing, protesting and pillorying of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“I don’t think we can ever change Clarence Thomas, and I don’t want to spend any more of my time or NAACP time trying,” Kweisi Mfume said of the conservative jurist, the only black person on the high court.

“I think we must end the Clarence Thomas fixation in our community and use that energy to change things we can change around us,” Mfume said in an interview previewing this weekend’s annual meeting of the board of directors of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Mfume has been criticized by some members of the civil rights organization for scolding the Maryland state chapter when it threatened to protest a Thomas speech scheduled for last month in Delaware.

Hanley Norment, president of the NAACP’s Maryland State Conference, said Friday he planned to have Maryland members pass out information this weekend “to alert members around the country about our problem with Mr. Mfume.”

As NAACP members arrived in New York on Friday, opinions were divided on how the organization should deal with Thomas.

NAACP member William Bell of Trenton, N.J., said Mfume was wrong to criticize the Maryland branch because “every ruling he [Thomas] makes hurts black people.”

But Jesse Gooding, branch president from Dayton, Ohio, agreed with Mfume that pounding on Thomas serves no purpose. “I think his rulings are poison, but he has a right to them,” Gooding said.

Haywood King, an NAACP member from Philadelphia, said that since Thomas can’t be voted off of the Supreme Court, protests are fruitless.

“What can we do?” King asked. “He’s there and he’s not leaving, so we just have to work around him.”

Thomas has been roundly criticized by blacks for ruling with the Supreme Court majority in cases that have imperiled majority-black voting districts, affirmative action and school desegregation.

His rulings are particularly galling to some because he replaced civil rights stalwart Thurgood Marshall, who worked as an NAACP lawyer on several groundbreaking discrimination cases before joining the high court.

The Maryland branch called Thomas an inappropriate role model for black youth, and the justice eventually canceled his January speech, which had been scheduled for a youth festival banquet in southern Delaware.

Mfume said he understands the frustrations of many regarding Thomas, but that it’s time for black activists to move on to other issues.

“I’m not saying we can’t protest, but when was the last time we addressed the spread of AIDS in the community or the growing problem of suicide among black men?” he asked.

Mfume said he doesn’t want to be viewed as a Thomas supporter, only as a supporter of open discussion.

But Norment said, “. . . Who said we can’t discuss them and picket Justice Thomas?”