Playing Board Games

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

Mary Stansel worked for only a month as assistant to the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. But her severance agreement last November was generous: two lump sums totaling $50,000, six monthly payments averaging about $5,400 each and, if N.A.A.C.P. executive director Benjamin Chavis did not find her a job paying at least $80,000 a year, an additional $250,000. The out-of-court settlement between Chavis and Stansel had remained private and indeed virtually secret until Stansel decided to introduce it into court. Chavis, she said, had not found her the job, and so she was suing him for the $250,000 and publicly charging him with employer discrimination and sexual harassment.

For some members of the N.A.A.C.P. board, however, the truly shocking revelation was that Chavis had agreed to pay Stansel not out of his own money but from the venerable civil rights association's precarious finances. "The board knew nothing about the settlement," said member Anthony Fugett after he heard news last week that the N.A.A.C.P. was being sued along with Chavis. "I'm on the budget committee, and this settlement was never in the budget," said Joseph Madison, a Washington radio talk-show host. "It never showed up on our expense statements." Madison had previously raised concerns about Chavis' financial handling of the N.A.A.C.P., which is $3 million in debt. Since Chavis assumed his post in April 1993, corporate donations have dwindled owing to the executive director's controversial positions, including voicing support for Louis Farrakhan.

Chavis' lawyer denied Stansel's charges. Furthermore, he said, Chavis had simply been exercising his executive authority in a personnel matter, and "the board is not involved in individual personnel matters." But that did not stop several members of the 64-person board from calling for Chavis to step down. Said Leroy Warren Jr., "The thing for Chavis to do that would be truly dignified would be to give his resignation."

That is unlikely to happen without a terrible fight. The chief reason: N.A.A.C.P. chairman of the board William Gibson, a South Carolina dentist who handpicked Chavis for the job. Gibson, according to an N.A.A.C.P. insider, "has stacked every important committee with his own supporters." In the past, his tightly controlled faction has fended off requests from other board members about the organization's finances, programs and directors. Critics have been branded as "traitors and Uncle Toms" by Gibson and Chavis. "I'd be very surprised if there were an emergency board meeting called over this issue," says an N.A.A.C.P. source who wants Chavis removed. "There should be one, but only Gibson can call it and he won't. The rank-and-file members don't know enough about what's going on to demand a change."

With reporting by Janet Tu/Washington and Jack E. White/Atlanta