Naacp

In announcing her candidacy for the chairmanship of the troubled NAACP last week, Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, offered a ray of hope.Ms. Evers-Williams is a former corporate executive and commissioner of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, where she oversaw a $1 billion budget and 7,000 employees. She is qualified to lead the nation's oldest civil rights group back to health. Whether that hope is realized depends on the willingness of the NAACP's fractious board to do the right thing when it meets Saturday.

Washington. -- Some Americans thought that when the NAACP board fired its executive director, Benjamin Chavis, after he used NAACP funds as ''hush money'' paid to a woman who charged him with sexual improprieties, the organization would quickly climb back to fiscal good health and national power.Not so. A crisis situation continues at the nation's oldest and once most-important civil-rights organization -- and not just because of a membership decline and a reluctance of big foundations and corporations to give money to it.Serious abuses of the meager funds of the NAACP have taken place for years, with Chairman William F. Gibson cited by some board members as the leading offender.

In confronting the difficult question of whether to endorse or oppose Clarence Thomas's nomination for the United States Supreme Court, the NAACP faced a painful choice between principle and pragmatism.On the issue of principle, there can be little doubt that were Thomas a white man with the same record he has compiled in his private and public life, the NAACP would be fighting the nomination tooth-and-nail.On the pragmatic side, there is the virtual certainty that if Thomas is defeated, the next nominee would be just as conservative as Thomas -- and not black.

Washington. -- It is sickening to watch the death of the NAACP, a once-proud organization now being strangled by two incredibly arrogant leaders.This oldest and once most-feared, most-respected of all the nation's civil-rights groups will soon sink into pitiable irrelevance, bankruptcy and shame unless a majority of its board of directors can rescue it from its chairman, William F. Gibson, a South Carolina dentist, and its executive director, Benjamin F....

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's oldest civil rights group, has come to a sad pass. Disaffected officials have asked the federal District Court in Baltimore to strip board Chairman William F. Gibson of control over the organization's finances and order an independent audit. The group is $4.5 million in debt; it has dipped $1 million into its pension fund to cover expenses. The respected law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, which was advising the NAACP pro bono, bailed out recently citing the board's unwillingness to do what is necessary to put its affairs in order.

The following editorial appeared in the New York Times.THIS page has urged the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to follow the example of the Congressional Black Caucus in distancing itself from Louis Farrakhan, the race-baiting leader of the Nation of Islam. The decision of the NAACP's executive director, the Rev. Benjamin Chavis Jr., to invite Mr. Farrakhan to a leadership conference this spring means instead that the nation's most venerable civil rights organization is playing into Mr. Farrakhan's hands.

The Anne Arundel County branch of the NAACP is seeking a federal Justice Department probe of the county's Police Department, claiming that there is a lack of diversity in the department and not enough promotion opportunities for black officers. Jacqueline Allsup, president of the county branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said she sent a letter Monday to Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, asking her to make a formal request for a Justice Department investigation.

The Baltimore branch of the NAACP requested Friday that city and school leaders hold a three-hour public hearing solely devoted to parent testimonies about school bullying. In an e-mail to school and City Council officials, Marvin Cheatham, president of the chapter, said that a recent bullying panel hosted by the organization pointed to an "urgent necessity" for such a hearing to understand how pervasive the issue is in city schools. Cheatham also said that recent reports of bullying and cheating in city schools indicates the need for a partially elected school board that answers to the public.