NAACP Board Picks New Chairman

Civil rights pioneer Julian Bond on Saturday was named chairman of the NAACP, which has weathered scandals and financial difficulties in recent years.

“It is a daunting responsibility,” Bond told members who met at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan after the 29-24 vote. “I want to make sure the NAACP voice is heard wherever race is discussed.”

Bond, 58, a former Georgia legislator, is a history professor in Washington, a frequent radio and television commentator and chairman of the NAACP’s publication, Crisis magazine.

He said he had joined the field of five other candidates Tuesday because he “got a number of calls from board members urging me to run.”

The other candidates for the unpaid position were Joe Madison, a Maryland radio host; Lenny Springs, a North Carolina banker; Leon Russell, a human rights official in Florida; Marc Stepp, a Detroit labor union executive; and Charles Whitehead, a utilities executive from Kentucky.

Though it had been a force in winning major civil rights battles for decades, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People has faced crippling scandals in the last three years.

In 1994, Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., who now goes by Minister Benjamin Chavis Muhammad, was fired after a sexual-harassment scandal and charges of mismanagement left the organization with a $4.8-million debt.

Last December, board member Hazel Dukes of New York City was ousted after she admitted pilfering more than $13,000 from a leukemia-stricken associate who trusted Dukes with her finances.

A former Georgia state senator, Bond left politics after losing a bitter congressional race to former civil rights colleague John Lewis in 1986.

The defeat was followed by charges from his wife, Alice, in 1987 that he was among several prominent blacks who used cocaine regularly. The allegations led to police and grand jury investigations, but no charges.

Bond’s predecessor, Myrlie Evers-Williams, said she is departing after accomplishing her mission of helping save the civil rights organization from “the financial, moral and organizational morass in which we found ourselves.”

The 64-year-old widow of assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers announced earlier this month that she would not seek a fourth one-year term.

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She also said the organization must reinvent itself or risk becoming irrelevant. The NAACP needs to become the “pathbreaker of the nation” on social and civil rights issues, she said.

The 64-member NAACP board met in closed session to choose the chairman of an organization that must now develop economic empowerment in the black community “as a civil rights issue,” NAACP President Kweisi Mfume told members.

Mfume said the NAACP’s priority is to boost activism among younger members of the almost 500,000-strong organization.