NAACP faces internal struggles

Disagreements rise over CEO selection, group’s direction, local chapters’ funds

By Kelly Brewington | Sun reporter

The NAACP’s national board is poised to select a new president and CEO. But a rift among members threatens to shake up the plans, as some complain they have been shut out of the process to choose a new leader for the Baltimore-based civil rights organization.

Calling itself the “Leadership of Conscience,” a group of about a dozen NAACP board members expressed its objections at the board’s annual meeting in New York last weekend. During board elections, the group waged an unsuccessful effort to unseat Chairman Julian Bond.

Dissident board members say the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is at a critical crossroads as it approaches its centennial next year. They say the matter is not a mere internal squabble and that the presidential selection process illustrates how the nation’s oldest civil rights organization is ruled by an elite inner circle that is out of touch with its grass roots.

“There is a significant coalition of opposition formed to push the NAACP forward and to reject the status quo,” said J. Whyatt Mondesire of Philadelphia, who was elected to the board last year. “People want to change the agenda and be in the forefront of the civil rights struggle.” (more…)