ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
June 30, 2005
NAACP selects new president
Erin Texeira
ATLANTA — Minutes after Bruce S. Gordon was
confirmed Saturday as the next president of the NAACP, the New
Jersey Native faced his first news conference, a standing-room-only
gathering packed with cameras and microphones.
Just like that, the virtual unknown who had been a 35-year executive
at Verizon was publicly weighing in on issues of economic justice,
the approaching 10th anniversary of the Million Man March and
the NAACP’s relationship with President Bush.
He made immediately clear that, though he has profound respect
for the organization’s venerable history, his focus is squarely
on taking the NAACP down new roads.
“I’m a forward-looking kind of a guy,” he said.
Gordon said his first priorities will be to improve the organization’s
finances — its expenses have exceeded its income for the
last two years, tax documents show — by working to build
anendowment, increasing membership and pushing for more efficiency
in operations.
His civil rights goals include working toward greater economic
equality, he said.
“People of color need to change and balance the trade deficit
that exists between people of color and the rest of society,”
Gordon said.
He also said he was looking forward to building a stronger relationship
with the Bush administration.
“I believe there has to be some common ground that can be
established between the White House and the NAACP that serves
the mutual interests of both of those parties,” he said.
“So I expect going forward to find a way to forge that relationship.”
Relations between the NAACP and Bush administration have been
strained. Julian Bond, chairman of the group’s board of
directors, has condemned the administration’s policies on
education, the economy and the war in Iraq and urged high black
voter turnout to defeat Bush for re-election last year.
Gordon was selected by a large majority of the board to succeed
Kweisi Mfume, former U.S. representative and a candidate for Senate
in Maryland who resigned abruptly in December. Several months
later, a report surfaced that his personal relationships with
NAACP staffers had contributed to widespread mismanagement at
national headquarters in Baltimore. One staff member threatened
to sue.
Described as a top-notch leader and consensus-builder, Gordon,
59, began his career in 1968 as a management trainee at Bell of
Pennsylvania. For 35 years, amid massive upheaval in the telecommunications
industry, he helped the company navigate the string of mergers
that led it to become Verizon Communications Inc. When he retired
in December 2003, he was chief of Verizon’s biggest division
— retail markets.
Gordon’s corporate background “means that he is accustomed
to working within a system in which merit and achievement count
the most,” Bond said in an interview. “That was attractive
to us. Not to say that the NAACP didn’t have that. But with
every step we’ve taken ... we wanted to move up. And we
think he’s going to bring us a quantitative move up.”
A National Association for the Advancement of Colored People search
committee invited Gordon to apply for the position in February.
More than 250 candidates were considered, Bond said.
It became clear last week that Gordon was the only presidential
candidate under consideration, a choice that marked a striking
change for the NAACP. Most presidents have been political or religious
leaders, or prominent figures from the civil rights movement.
“He’s not a minister or a politician, but this man’s
been doing it all along,” said Eric Cevis, a vice president
in Verizon’s retail division who has known Gordon since
1986. “He has a social accountability that he’s been
preaching for years.”
Cevis said Gordon pioneered diversity efforts at Verizon for blacks
and other minorities, consistently pushing the company to improve
its hiring and promotion practices.
Gordon was born in Camden, N.J., and raised with four siblings
by parents who were both educators and NAACP activists.
He serves on boards of Southern Co. and Tyco International Ltd.
and is a trustee of Gettysburg College and the Alvin Ailey Dance
Foundation. He was named one of Fortune magazine’s 50 most
powerful black executives in 2002 and executive of the year by
Black Enterprise magazine in 1998.
“I think he’s a godsend,” said Leroy Warren,
a board member from Silver Spring, Md., minutes after the board
voted. “We need to get back to real civil rights and economic
development. ... He has the intelligence to move forward.”
After contract negotiations, Gordon is expected to be confirmed
as president at the association’s convention in July.
(Associated Press)
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