Naacp Leaders

Though the Confederate flag seems destined to come down from the South Carolina Statehouse dome, the NAACP plans to expand its boycott of the state, calling on the motion picture industry, professional athletes and labor organizations to join in until the flag is removed from Statehouse grounds. A bill awaiting final approval in the South Carolina Legislature would move the flag from the dome to a 30-foot pole at the Confederate Soldier's Monument on Statehouse grounds, where it could be illuminated.

Religious leaders can best advance the cause of civil rights by encouraging their congregations to vote in this year's elections and to participate in the census, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume told a smattering of national church representatives yesterday. Several dozen ministers and rabbis gathered in Baltimore for a two-day National Religious Leaders Summit called to reaffirm ties between churches and synagogues, the African-American community and the Baltimore-based civil rights organization.

ON NOV. 29, officials from three of four television networks walked out on a hearing called by the NAACP to discuss the TV industry's lack of racial diversity. Leslie Moonves of CBS was the only network president who spoke at the hearing. Fox Entertainment President Doug Herzog, NBC West Coast President Scott Sassa and ABC Television Network President Patricia Fili-Krushel declined to appear, and their subordinates abruptly left without giving verbal presentations.Angered by the walkout, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said, "These are not drive-by hearings.

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens released statistics yesterday to show that the county has been doing a better job of hiring minority workers since she took office in January.The numbers were a response to criticism by local leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People that Owens had not done enough to secure county jobs for women and people of color.Since the start of Owens' administration this year, 22 percent of the 76 people hired were minorities and 22 percent were women.

Ending five tantalizing months of speculation that had paralyzed Baltimore's mayoral race, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said yesterday that he will not run for mayor and will remain with the civil rights organization.Despite an exhaustive effort by state, city, business and community leaders to recruit the former West Baltimore congressman and city councilman into the race, Mfume said yesterday that his "inner voice" told him to remain with the nation's oldest civil rights group."I have repeatedly, from the outset, said that I would not be a candidate because I believe that with all certainty that my work here with the NAACP and on the national level was in many respects a job uncompleted," Mfume said at a news conference at the organization's national offices in northwest Baltimore.

After a 14-month effort to revitalize a local branch of the NAACP, Carroll County has earned an official sanction from state leaders of the organization.Herbert H. Lindsey, state conference president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Wednesday that he has put in motion a process "that will result in the reactivation of the dormant branch into a vital community service.""The executive committee of the Maryland State Conference has determined that the requirements have been met for revitalizing the Carroll County branch," Lindsey said.

Dousing rampant rumors about his own potential candidacy -- and throwing Baltimore's mayoral race wide open -- NAACP President Kweisi Mfume announced yesterday that he will not seek to become the city's next mayor."

Nation of Islam minister Benjamin F. Muhammad, who was the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis until his conversion in February, said he wants to act as a bridge between Muslims and Christians to foster cooperation in solving problems affecting the African-American community."

PITTSBURGH -- Trying to pump vitality into the NAACP, Kweisi Mfume told local leaders yesterday to recruit members on street corners, form youth councils and hold demonstrations."

WASHINGTON -- News that the nation's oldest and largest civil-rights organization is considering a shift away from school desegregation signals a moral victory for Clarence Thomas.For years the conservative black Supreme Court justice has argued that public-school desegregation is vastly overrated as a goal for civil-rights law. Now a rising chorus in the nation's leading integrationist organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, appears to agree. NAACP leaders plan a formal debate on the long-held school-integration policy when at their annual convention next month in Pittsburgh.