A Leader's Dissonant Swan Song

When Roy Wilkins rose last week to address the 67th annual national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Memphis, nothing seemed terribly amiss. As the group's executive director for the past eleven years, Wilkins, 74, has become the embodiment of the organization that he had labored so energetically to help build. But once the normally soft-spoken Wilkins started talking, he shook the 3,000 delegates out of their calm.

Wilkins, who was expected to leave his post at the end of 1976, shocked the assemblage by accusing some members of the N.A.A.C.P.'s board of directors of waging a "campaign of vilification" against him concerning his honesty, his health and his competence. He said he had tried to laugh off the allegations. "But how does one laugh when his heart is breaking?" At first, Wilkins went on, "I retained counsel with a view to entering suits in the courts against certain board members for defamation of character." Though he has abandoned that plan, he said, he will stay in his job until the mid-1977 convention, which will be held in his birthplace, St. Louis.

Wilkins' broadside stunned the convention. Board Member Emmitt J. Douglas of Baton Rouge, La., grabbed a microphone on the convention floor and sharply rebuked Wilkins. "I resent allegations against board members unless they are named," snapped Douglas. Besides, he added, Wilkins was reneging on an agreement to retire at year's end. While some board members fretted privately that Wilkins might "kill the organization" with his inflammatory remarks, the N.A.A.C.P.'S rank and file were inclined to listen sympathetically to Wilkins' plea out of sentiment for his long service to the organization.

Money was apparently one of the factors behind Wilkins' outburst. He said he had belatedly discovered that his retirement contract did not provide him with the full executive director's salary of $38,500 through the next convention. Instead, it placed him on a $19,000 annual pension, plus a $10,000 consulting fee, beginning next January--a difference of $4,750 in his 1977 earnings. At a press conference later, he pounded his fist on the table and insisted he would remain at the post "at the executive director's salary." Board members deny Wilkins' accusations.

Bad Morale. The Wilkins flap was part of a deeper crisis in the venerable association. The organization came close to bankruptcy early this year when a Mississippi court ordered it to pay a white policeman $210,000 after state officers of the N.A.A.C.P. had accused him of brutality. Only a special $300,000 contribution from General Motors Corp. enabled the N.A.A.C.P. to post a $262,000 bond in order to appeal the state court's ruling.

Some members blame Wilkins' lack of administrative control for the bad morale that has recently plagued the association. A widespread criticism is that he stayed on too long and that under him the N.A.A.C.P. has acted too timidly. Wilkins' difficulties began with the deaths in 1974 of his two closest friends: N.A.A.C.P. Board Chairman Stephen Gill Spottswood and Assistant Director John A. Morsell, Wilkins' hand-picked successor. Wilkins' own health began to deteriorate following an emergency operation last March for the removal of a kidney stone.

Convinced that the N.A.A.C.P. needed some fresh leadership, Board Chairman Margaret Bush Wilson, 57, a St. Louis lawyer, and other directors began to act independently of him to remedy what they saw as fiscal mismanagement and sloppy record keeping. Earlier this year Wilson's "Majority Caucus" stripped Wilkins of the power to hire and fire top assistants. Today, the search committee of the N.A.A.C.P. is not consulting with Wilkins on his successor.

Wilkins is plainly hurt by what he feels is a failure of the board to recognize what he has achieved during his 44 years with the N.A.A.C.P. In an interview with TIME before his surprise speech, Wilkins reminisced about the 1954 decision by the Supreme Court in Brown v. the Board of Education as the "final crowning glory which said that separate but equal was no more." But he says that today the issue of busing is being used to repeal the effects of the court's decision. "If you freeze the neighborhood school patterns that are present, you go straight back to Plessy v. Ferguson [the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that established the separate-but-equal doctrine]. The neighborhood white school is always better than the black school."

Whether Wilkins retires at year's end or next July, the search for his successor is still on. Among the leading candidates: Memphis Lawyer Benjamin Hooks, 51, the only black member of the Federal Communications Commission; Georgia State Senator Julian Bond, 36; N.A.A.C.P. Lobbyist Clarence Mitchell, 65, sometimes described as "the 101st Senator"; N.A.A.C.P. Official Gloster Current, 63, who now handles many of the organization's administrative details; and Gustav Heningburg, 46, director of the Newark Urban Coalition.

The next director will inherit an organization of over 400,000 members with considerable prestige among blacks and whites alike, but with harsh problems--including continuing failure to recruit younger staff members, worsening black unemployment and the loss of the Civil Rights impetus of the '60s. As a result of Wilkins' blast, the next director may also have inherited a tarnished public relations image. That is a problem the N.A.A.C.P., thanks largely to Wilkins, has not had for years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.