"Twilight Zone" for the N.A.A.C.P.

By Jack E. White

Divided by internal feuds, it searches for new directions

It is America's oldest, largest and best-known civil rights organization, but not since its founding in 1910 has the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People faced a deeper crisis. Membership is stagnant, it has growing financial problems, and the 64-member board is divided not by searching debates over new directions but by personal feuds and internal politics. Beyond that, the association is engaged in a costly battle with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund over the fund's use of those initials. "The N.A.A.C.P. is in its twilight zone," says Martin Kilson of Harvard, one of the nation's ranking black political scientists. "The sun is setting on its head."

Leaders of the N.A.A.C.P., which held its 73rd annual convention in Boston last week, dismiss criticism that the association is currently lacking in originality or imagination. "We have made 73 years of progress using methods that are tried and true," insists Executive Director Benjamin Hooks, 56. "They are still good. We are not going to abandon them." Nonetheless, there is growing evidence that the organization's stand-pat approach is appealing less and less to the young, educated, middle-class blacks who should be providing it with new leadership.

Numbers tell part of the story. Since the late Roy Wilkins stepped down as executive director in 1977, membership in the N.A.A.C.P. has officially hovered around 400,000; some observers believe the actual figure may be as low as 250,000. Despite a recent increase (to $10) in its annual membership fee, the N.A.A.C.P. may have to move from its Manhattan headquarters to cheaper offices in either Brooklyn or Washington, D.C.

Although the N.A.A.C.P. is committed to a registration drive aimed at adding 1.5 to a registration drive aimed at adding 1.5 million blacks to the 11 million now on electoral rolls, only one full-time staff member and a secretary have been assigned to the task. Similarly, only one staffer is involved full time with Operation Fair Share, a campaign of selective boycotts aimed at corporations that refuse to integrate their boards or commit themselves to hiring more blacks. The organization also has had trouble recruiting top-caliber staffers. Says Board Member Julian Bond: "Working for the N.A.A.C.P. is no longer a plum for well-qualified blacks."

When Wilkins was in charge there was never any doubt as to who spoke for the N.A.A.C.P. Many blacks attribute the organization's current impotence to a struggle for power between Hooks and Margaret Bush Wilson, 63, a St. Louis lawyer who heads the N.A.A.C.P. board. "On almost every issue there is a pro-Hooks faction and a pro-Wilson faction," says one board member. Wilson denies that there is any such rivalry ("Ben and I are both capable") or that she wants the top job.

Wilson's critics blame her for the embarrassing squabble with the Legal Defense Fund. At the Boston convention, the 3,000 delegates were bombarded with speeches and pamphlets attacking the L.D.F. and rallying support for the "real N.A.A.C.P." Wilson persuasively argues that the fund, which for technical reasons separated from its parent organization in 1957, has not only been siphoning off potential contributions from the N.A.A.C.P. but also confusing donors about what the two organizations stand for. The N.A.A.C.P. has retained former Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts to press a copyright infringement suit against the L.D.F. in federal court. Some association insiders charge that so much of the N.A.A.C.P.'s $7 million budget for 1982 has been earmarked for the case that important programs will have to be curtailed.

For all their doubts about its institutional strengths and divided leadership, most blacks agree that the N.A.A.C.P. has, or should have, a major role to play in defense of their rights. Despite Ronald Reagan's well-publicized signing last week of an extension of the Voting Rights Act, many blacks hold the President responsible for spreading a mood of indifference to minorities throughout the nation. "This Administration is not just turning back the clock, it is rolling back the calendar," Hooks told convention delegates.

Both Vice President George Bush and Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker were invited to the conference; neither came. "There is no way to reach this Administration," complained Ben Andrews, a Republican member of the N.A.A.C.P. board. "We have been standing outside, throwing stones at the White House and nobody has been inside negotiating."

The Administration is not entirely to blame for the situation. The divisions in the N.A.A.C.P. reflect the weakness of the civil rights movement in general. Many of the groups that were led by pioneers of the movement--Martin Luther King's S.C.L.C., Stokely Carmichael's S.N.C.C., James Farmer's CORE--either exist no longer or are ineffective splinter groups. Despite its size and visibility, the N.A.A.C.P. is losing out as a focus of black organizational efforts to such specialized groups as the National Association of Black Accountants and the National Association of Minority County Officials.

The convention provided some proof that the fighting spirit of the N.A.A.C.P. remains intact despite all the association's woes. "This is a momentous moment, a big day for the N.A.A.C.P.," said General Counsel Thomas Atkins last Friday. From the buzzing crowd, a woman shouted, "Well, tell us! Don't keep us in suspense." Atkins then announced that the U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously reversed the decision of a Mississippi court, which had assessed the N.A.A.C.P. more than $1.25 million in damages for supporting a 1966 boycott by blacks of discriminatory merchants in Port Gibson, Miss. Jubilant delegates burst into old freedom songs and danced in the aisles in a 30-minute display reminiscent of the civil rights rallies of the '60s. --ByJackE. White

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