Naacp

The NAACP has named a 15-member search committee to find a replacement for former president and CEO Bruce Gordon, who resigned from the Baltimore-based civil rights organization in March. The committee, made up of activists, scholars and business people, is working with the San Francisco-based firm HNCL Search. Along with National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Chairman Julian Bond, the committee includes: Patrick R. Gaston, president of Verizon Foundation; Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal professor of American social thought and professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania; Heather Booth, president of the Midwest Academy, a national training center for social change; Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Lamell McMorris, managing partner of the Washington-based firm Perennial Sports and Entertainment; and Ralph G. Neas, president emeritus of People for the American Way. Additional committee members include board members the Rev. Wendell Anthony, Cora Breckenridge, Gina Clayton, the Rev. Theresa A. Dear, David E. Goatley, Aubrey Hooper, Adora Obi Nweze and Jesse H. Turner Jr. Gordon's abrupt departure after 19 months on the job came after repeated clashes with board members over the organization's philosophy and leadership style.

DETROIT -- The NAACP youth director who conceptualized the civil rights organization's mock funeral for the N-word is among the more than 70 staff members who are losing their jobs because of financial troubles - prompting a protest yesterday outside the office of the group's chairman. Amid the organization's 98th annual convention, the group of young NAACP members demanded a meeting with Chairman Julian Bond to discuss their concerns and to try to reverse the staff cut. Without Victoria Lanier, the regional youth field director, the organization will lose a vital link between young membership and the administration at the Baltimore headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, they said.

DETROIT -- Those who question the need for an NAACP in the post-civil rights era need only look at the Supreme Court's recent decision concerning integration in public schools or the federal government's botched response to Hurricane Katrina, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said last night in a speech kicking off the organization's 98th annual convention. "As we find ourselves refighting battles we thought we had already won, we are reminded that the NAACP is as needed now as ever before," Bond said to a crowd of several thousand at the Cobo Conference/Exhibition Center.

Bruce S. Gordon announced his resignation yesterday as president and chief executive officer of the NAACP, less than two years after taking the helm of the nation's oldest civil rights organization. Julian Bond, chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that the Baltimore-based organization was sad to see Gordon go. But some board members and a source affiliated with the NAACP said tensions between Gordon and board members over his vision and leadership style contributed to his departure.

DID NAACP President Kweisi Mfume encourage those who wanted him to be a mayoral candidate? Or did the public courtship come unsolicited, even unwelcomed?Well, what came first -- the chicken or the egg?Rumors that tied Mfume to a possible mayoral candidacy have been floating in the city for more than a year. But they always were vague, their sources unclear. Then, on Dec. 3, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke announced that he would not seek a fourth term, and faces and names became attached to the call for Mfume to run. A short time later, Del. Howard "Pete" Rawlings and his band of Mfume supporters formed a Draft Mfume Committee.

Six years after the Carroll County chapter of the NAACP disbanded for lack of leadership, members of the newly reorganized branch met last night to choose officers who will continue the rebuilding process in the fast-growing county.Leon B. Dorsey, 34, of Westminster was elected president of the chapter.Dorsey, coordinator for the Responsible Fatherhood Program in Frederick County, promised to focus his efforts on getting members involved in projects that would help the county's children."We have to prepare for them," he said.

The NAACP and an organization of black telecommunications workers will announce a partnership today aimed at encouraging African-Americans to vote and participate in the census.Under the joint venture, which has been in the works for several months, branches of the civil rights organization will team with branches of the Alliance of Black Telecommunications Employees, a New Jersey-based nonprofit."Every presidential election, we've had a registration drive. We emphasize that kind of involvement," said Rodney O. Buie, president of the alliance.

NEW YORK -- The NAACP may sue major television networks and challenge local stations' broadcast licenses because their programming does not reflect the nation's racial diversity, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume announced yesterday.No major characters in the 26 new shows planned by ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC this fall are minorities, Mfume said, citing this as evidence that the stations may be in violation of the Federal Communications Commission standard to serve the public interest."When Americans tune in this fall all over America and sit down to watch the new prime-time television shows they will see a virtual whitewash in programming," Mfume said at the 90th annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

As Kweisi Mfume edges closer to entering Baltimore's mayoral race, NAACP officials are preparing for what looks like the inevitable: their president's departure.For weeks, board Chairman Julian Bond has been e-mailing board members news stories from Baltimore in an apparent attempt to soften the blow of a possible Mfume resignation."I guess the stage is being set: `Don't be surprised if he does make this move and understand that he is being drafted,' " said Tony Fugett, a national board member from Baltimore.

MARTIN LUTHER King Jr.'s life and dreams were recalled and celebrated Sunday by South Carroll churches and synagogues at the fifth MLK Memorial Celebration at Holy Spirit Lutheran Church in Eldersburg.Members of 11 churches and synagogues enjoyed a potluck dinner and fellowship followed by a program focusing on misconceptions about the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.With the theme "NAACP Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," a panel that included Marge Green, Maryland Women in NAACP; Jennine Auerback, NAACP community resource director; Swaynice Hawkins, a NAACP member; and E. Cordell Hunter, also of the NAACP, led discussions.

Despite a 15-year legal fight against racial profiling, Maryland NAACP leaders say they need to see Maryland State Police internal investigations of black motorists' complaints, amid concerns that the practice continues. "Of course racial profiling is going on," said Gerald Stansbury, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Maryland State Conference. "There is a sense of that, yes." His remarks came as the state's second-highest court heard arguments Tuesday in the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union's effort to see the 9,500 pages of documents in the internal state police investigations into complaints of racial profiling, and as those organizations maintained the racial disparity in traffic stops and searches has continued.

NEW YORK - -In his first address to the nation's civil rights leaders since his election, President Barack Obama marked the centennial anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People by paying tribute Thursday to its history and calling on activists to tackle modern-day problems. Only because of their forerunners, Obama told members, could he, as an African-American, stand before them as president of the United States. "I understand there may be a temptation among some to think that discrimination is no longer a problem in 2009," Obama said.

The president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP says it looks as if the city is a good bet to host the civil rights organization's national convention in 2012, which happens to be the 100th anniversary of the local branch. "It looks favorable," Marvin L. "Doc" Cheatham said Wednesday, a day after he, Mayor Sheila Dixon and representatives of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association and the Baltimore Convention Center made a 20-minute pitch to an NAACP panel considering proposals for that year's gathering.

The Baltimore Development Corp. is making a push to keep the national headquarters of the NAACP in the city rather than see the civil rights organization move to Washington or Montgomery County. Representatives of the city's economic development agency have compiled a list of more than 15 locations in Baltimore's central business district that could meet the organization's space needs and visited four of them with NAACP personnel, according to Phil Croskey, director of development for the agency's west team.

Decades of racial strife have left their mark on Somerset County, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP said Tuesday as they called on leaders of the Eastern Shore county to ensure minorities get better access to good-paying school and government jobs. In a report, the groups noted that no African-American has ever been elected or appointed to a top job in county government, and that no African-American was employed by the county in a professional capacity in 2007, according to the latest statistics submitted to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The vice president of Baltimore's NAACP chapter said yesterday during a rally for taxicab drivers that his reputation has been damaged after police arrested him, claiming to have found drugs in his car. Ellis L. Staten Jr., 44, was not charged with a crime, although officers said they recovered heroin and marijuana during a search of his vehicle Thursday near Pennsylvania Avenue and Dolphin Street. Staten said he was targeted by police because of his work with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which held an organizing meeting yesterday for city cabdrivers.

It began before it began. This was in 1905, when the great black scholar W.E.B. DuBois called a meeting of prominent black men. They met on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls because hotels in their own country would not accommodate them and formed what became known as the Niagara Movement. The Movement, which held a subsequent meeting at Harper's Ferry, W.Va., issued a statement that said, in part, "We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social, and until we get these rights, we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America."

A century's worth of struggle, action and reward should be acknowledged and praised. The NAACP's centennial is a reason to celebrate the past and to lay the groundwork for the next phase of America's oldest civil rights organization. The inequities that led to the group's founding have been resolved through legal challenges and the hard work of its members. But not all is equal in today's America. A lack of opportunity persists for many African-Americans, and the disparities prevalent in America's public schools attest to the need for a vibrant and vital NAACP.

For a century, the NAACP fought lynch mobs, demanded fairness in schoolhouses and cemented a movement of foot soldiers to wage battles large and small against the indignities of legal discrimination. As the nation's oldest civil rights group celebrates its centennial, the circumstances might be different but the mission is the same, its president says. "In black communities across the country, we still see too many young black men killed in the prime of their lives," NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous said yesterday.

Elijah E. Cummings' South Baltimore Cub Scout pack was so poor that members shopped for uniforms at secondhand stores, made their own patches and shared a single manual. And when their den mother needed rope for an activity, she cut pieces of clothesline for the boys to share. Today, youths growing up in similarly rough city neighborhoods think joining the Scouts is too expensive and, even worse, uncool, said Cummings, now a Baltimore-area congressman. A new partnership between the Maryland NAACP and the Baltimore-area council of the Boy Scouts of America hopes to change that perception, encouraging youngsters from some of the city's toughest areas to excel in the Scouts.