Naacp Officials

The NAACP's board chairman said yesterday that he knew nothing about Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr.'s agreement to pay a fired employee up to $332,400 until more than eight months after the secret deal was made.Dr. William F. Gibson said he would reserve judgment on Dr. Chavis' handling of the settlement with Mary E. Stansel, the former aide, until an Aug. 20 emergency board meeting in Baltimore. He said the NAACP general counsel -- who also was not told of the agreement -- was preparing a report to the board on the case.

A private meeting between the NAACP's chief executive and a group of black nationalists has angered members of the civil rights group's board, which wasn't told of the event.Among 50 leftists invited by the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. -- half of whom came to the meeting Friday in Detroit -- were political radicals Angela Davis and Kwame Toure (formerly Stokely Carmichael), rapper Sister Souljah and former presidential candidate Lenora Fulani.Of the four, only Ms. Fulani attended.A March 18 letter of invitation -- headed "Confidential: Not for Publication or Reproduction" -- described as one goal of the meeting "access of Pan-Africans, Progressives and Nationalists into increased levels of membership and active participation within the NAACP at national and local levels."

Baltimore police arrested the vice president of Baltimore's NAACP chapter Thursday afternoon after heroin and marijuana were recovered during a search of his car, though prosecutors declined to pursue charges. Police said Ellis L. Staten Jr., 44, who is also an executive committee member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Maryland conference, was in the driver's seat of a car that had stopped near Pennsylvania Avenue and Dolphin Street, which police say is a well-known drug market.

Members of the local NAACP branch say county officials have responded inadequately to several recent racial incidents in the county, including the distribution of white supremacist literature, vandalism of a black church and an attack on a black student riding a school bus.At a news conference Saturday, Bowyer G. Freeman, president of thecounty NAACP chapter, called for aggressive prosecution of those involved in racist crimes and a public condemnation of...

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.

As a key state lawmaker demanded answers from Morgan State University, the president of the NAACP decried yesterday the college's compilation of a secret dossier on the late Del. Howard P. Rawlings while he was battling cancer. NAACP leader Kweisi Mfume, a Morgan graduate and member of its Board of Regents, said he was "sickened" by revelations that university officials had assembled a lengthy report on Rawlings, the powerful Baltimore Democrat and frequent Morgan critic who died Nov. 14. Mfume said he called the chairman of Morgan's board, Dallas R. Evans, yesterday and asked him to hold an emergency meeting as soon as possible.

The president of the NAACP's Anne Arundel County chapter expressed alarm yesterday at a defense lawyer's request in a high-profile trial, saying it could lead to eliminating blacks from a jury that will decide whether a white teenager is to blame for an African-American youth's death in a brawl last summer. Stating that he was worried about juror bias, the lawyer for the first defendant facing trial in Noah Jamahl Jones' death told a judge yesterday that he wants prospective jurors asked if they belong to groups that pushed for prosecutions in Jones' death.

The NAACP has named an administrator to oversee the finances of its struggling Baltimore branch, which owes the national organization more than $60,000.The 3,500-member city branch's debt to the national NAACP, which has headquarters in Baltimore, includes $50,000 in back membership dues and $13,000 in annual assessments, said Rodney A. Orange, branch president.The Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has had troubled finances for several years.

Two months after a black family's North Laurel home was ransacked and defaced with racial epithets, the president of the Howard County chapter of the NAACP called yesterday for an end to what he called "institutional racism" in the county.Jenkins Odoms Jr. told reporters at the First Baptist Church of Guilford that racism is evident in county housing, employment, public safety and education practices."We're going to have to go back and hit the streets," said Odoms, joined by the Rev. John L. Wright, pastor of First Baptist, and the Rev. Robert A. F. Turner, head of the Howard County African-American Coalition, which represents 50 organizations countywide.

African-Americans need a new generation of freedom fighters to continue the struggle against discrimination, the Rev. Jamal-Harrison Bryant told an audience of about 500 politicians, civic leaders and local residents who attended the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 12th Annual Awards Dinner held in Annapolis yesterday. Bryant, NAACP national youth director, called for a "passing of the torch" from the generation represented by the well-dressed and slightly graying crowd at the dinner to today's young people, saying the generation needs to understand that racism is still alive.