As Gordon exits, NAACP pledges focus on activism

Erin Texeira

NEW YORK — Bruce S. Gordon quit as NAACP president after clashing with the board over the group’s modern-day mission, a move that highlights a stubborn problem for activists: how to do civil rights work in an era decades after the movement’s peak.

Should the NAACP have allowed Gordon, as Chairman Julian Bond put it, to “pull [them] into the post-civil rights period?”

Bond firmly rejected the idea.

“We’re not post-civil rights,” he said. “The struggle continues.”

Bond and other members of the 64-person board he leads believe that, though dramatic gains have been made in race relations since the 1950s, the movement has not yet completed its task — and won’t until persistent racial gaps in achievement and opportunity disappear.

Few American blacks would quibble that equality remains an unfulfilled dream.

Gordon recognizes that, too. He often sparked applause among NAACP rank-and-file when he paraphrased Charles Dickens, telling them that, “for African Americans, this is the best of times and the worst of times.”

But the question remains: how should the NAACP address the “worst” part?

The Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, since its founding in 1909, has focused on advocacy — raising public awareness of inequality — not service. For instance, to combat black unemployment, the group would hold protest marches, gather signatures and lobby elected officials for better public policy. It would not offer skills training or make job referrals.

But from the start of his presidency, Gordon made clear he wanted to do more of the latter — and he repeatedly resisted being reined in by the NAACP’s traditional mission or its enforcement body, the board of directors. In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, Gordon acknowledged that NAACP Chairman Julian Bond had to talk him out of quitting just weeks after he took over in the summer of 2005.

Gordon rankled many board members when he traveled the country with a Microsoft PowerPoint slide show detailing his plans for providing social services.

“We are going to be very outcome-oriented, very results-oriented,” he said last July, “as opposed to activity and effort-oriented.”

Gordon’s goals of closing racial disparities in wealth, education and on prison rolls were, he admitted then, “high bars.”

“But if we don’t engage in addressing the fundamental issues that, to me, represent the civil rights struggles of the 21st century, then we shouldn’t exist,” he said.

Gordon is leaving, Bond said, because the organization is “resisting philosophical change. We’re staying the course.”

It’s not that the NAACP hasn’t considered changing. Starting in 2000, board members re-evaluated the group’s mission and strategic plan with experts at Harvard University’s School of Business, said Rupert Richardson, a board member from Baton Rouge, La.

“We spent four years studying how we could effectively bring about change in this country,” Richardson said. “We came to the conclusion that advocacy was the way we should focus. Other organizations do service. We felt we were created to advocate for justice.”

Richardson further explained in a published report that the problems went beyond substance: Gordon and the board had incompatible leadership styles.

“We would have liked the opportunity to work with him, but he came with this corporate attitude of: ‘You hired me to do this job and get out of the way and let me do it,’” Richardson told the Baltimore Sun. “That’s not how things work in most civil rights organizations, and certainly not at the NAACP.”

But Gordon, a retired Verizon Corp. executive, questions the wisdom in that — and so do others.

“The NAACP struggled for almost 100 years to get basic citizenship rights [for blacks],” said Robert C. Smith, a political scientist at California State University at San Francisco. “They won that. ... We are now in the post-civil rights era.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 secured blacks’ basic citizenship rights and opened countless opportunities to new generations. Today, the black middle class is bigger than ever. Blacks graduate high school at nearly the same rate as whites. In many arenas, from politics to entertainment, African Americans are holding their own and excelling.

Much of the credit goes to the NAACP and other civil rights groups. Even in the last week, there have been reminders of the nation’s progress — and the waning relevance of a group that battled for integration.

On Sunday, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton gathered with other national leaders, white and black, in Selma, Ala., for the high-profile anniversary of a 1965 civil rights protest. Blacks suffered brutal attacks during the Bloody Sunday march for voting rights, which spotlighted for the nation the racial injustices in the South and propelled the movement forward.

Last Friday, the NAACP’s annual Image Awards ceremony in Los Angeles — begun in 1967 to honor long-ignored blacks in Hollywood — lauded actors Forest Whitaker and Jennifer Hudson. The two have hardly been overlooked lately. They’ve each won a pile of mainstream film awards, including Oscars.

“Hollywood has finally caught up to the NAACP,” said Donna Brazile, a black Democratic strategist.

It’s a new day. Many had hoped Gordon would help lead the organization into another era.

Instead, the group is appointing a search committee to find a new president for the second time in less than three years.

As during the organization’s last search, after Kweisi Mfume’s resignation, Dennis C. Hayes, the NAACP’s general counsel, will lead the organization in the interim.

In replacing Mfume, Gordon came to an organization with concerns over stagnant membership, questions about its relevance and budget problems. In 2005, the NAACP used reserve funds to cover a $4.7 million budget shortfall and asked a dozen employees at its Baltimore headquarters to take lower-paying positions.

(Associated Press)