Recharging The Mission

By Anita Hamilton; Peter Bailey

When Kweisi Mfume took the helm of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) in 1996, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization was in crisis. Mired in debt and stung by a sex scandal involving ousted executive director Benjamin Chavis, the group needed a leader who could restore its credibility. Mfume, a five-term Democratic Congressman from Baltimore, stepped up to the challenge. Through a campaign of corporate sponsorship, he erased the group's $3.2 million in debt and stockpiled $15 million in cash reserves.

But the fate of Mfume's social initiatives proved less successful and were emblematic of an identity crisis within the group. "We have all this money to spend, but I don't feel like the N.A.A.C.P. is effective as a civil rights organization," says Michael Meyers, a former assistant director of the organization and now executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition. While Mfume made headlines for grading Hollywood on minority representation and denouncing ebonics ("black English"), detractors say he did little to draw attention to the health, education and criminal-justice issues that still cripple many in the black community. Laments Jerome Whyatt Mondesire, president of the group's Philadelphia chapter: "We've moved away from the grass-root courtroom battles that made us relevant to the plight of lower-income blacks."

Mfume stepped down as president on Jan. 1, citing personal reasons, but sources close to the organization told TIME that the N.A.A.C.P.'s executive committee voted against renewing his contract. The issue was nepotism, which came to a head when Mfume allegedly appointed his son's girlfriend as director of corporate and foundation development in June 2003. The incident followed other actions benefitting friends of Mfume's and was the deciding factor, says Meyers, a longtime critic of the organization. Mfume declined to speak about the allegations.

Now the N.A.A.C.P. is once again seeking a leader and is at another critical juncture. It is searching for someone who can both address the divergent concerns of the nation's 36 million African Americans and navigate an increasingly hostile political climate. After declining to speak at the group's annual meeting last July, President Bush called his relationship with the N.A.A.C.P. "basically nonexistent." (Bush met privately with Mfume in late December.) Then the President named Gerald Reynolds, a conservative black Republican with a record of opposing civil rights protections, to head the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "Racism is not a deal killer like it was in the '60s," Reynolds told TIME. "You can work around it." And a new study by Syracuse University found that federal enforcement of civil rights laws fell drastically from 1999 to 2003. During that period, the number of cases prosecuted dropped nearly 50%, despite a steady number of complaints.

And now, just as the N.A.A.C.P. has recovered its financial health, it is being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS is reviewing the group's tax-exempt status on the grounds that it engaged in partisan politics, a no-no for nonprofits. N.A.A.C.P. chairman Julian Bond, who has accused the Bush Administration of drawing its "most rabid supporters from the Taliban wing of American politics," calls the probe an attempt to silence the group. "We're not going to allow any institution to prohibit us from fighting racism," he says.

Perhaps an even bigger challenge to the organization is the task of coming up with a clear and inclusive agenda. During the civil rights era, poor and middle-class blacks were united in their need for basic access to schools, housing and jobs. Now a growing black middle class has moved out of the inner cities and become increasingly detached from the needs of poor blacks. Some 27% of black households earned more than $50,000 a year in 2001, vs. just 12% in 1971, according to U.S. Census data, adjusted for inflation. Despite those gains, about 20% of blacks remained below the poverty line in 2002, up from 18% in 2000. Poor blacks struggle with high incarceration and unemployment rates. An estimated 30% of black men under 40 have been in jail, and according to a study by Community Service Society, a nonprofit that advocates for low-income people, almost half of black men in New York City are jobless. But middle-class blacks are more concerned about affirmative action and cuts in Pell grants to pay for college tuition.

Critics inside and outside the group say the N.A.A.C.P., which was founded in 1909 and claims some 500,000 members, needs to shift gears. "There was a time to do a lot of marching," says Elijah Cummings, a Democratic Congressman from Baltimore and the outgoing leader of the Congressional Black Caucus. "Now it is time to do a lot of negotiating." That means reaching beyond liberals who have supported the civil rights agenda. Even within the black community--and the N.A.A.C.P.--there is a growing conservative voice. Some 11% of blacks voted for Bush in 2004, up from 8% in 2000. Mfume notes that the N.A.A.C.P.'s 64-member board of directors has more than a dozen Republicans. And the nine-member executive search committee charged with finding Mfume's successor includes in its ranks a prominent white Republican, Jack Kemp, who was Housing Secretary under President George H. W. Bush.

In some ways, this Republican faction signals a return to the original political allegiances of African Americans. In homage to Abraham Lincoln's ending slavery, most blacks voted Republican until Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt wooed them into his New Deal coalition in 1932. Now the Republicans are injecting different ideas. Kemp, for example, suggests that the government eliminate capital-gains taxes on inner-city entrepreneurs in order to put more funds into urban pockets of impoverishment. Only 5% of blacks are self-employed, vs. 11% of whites.

Others believe that the growing conservative voices within the N.A.A.C.P. only reinforce its elitist image. Topics like AIDS, programs for ex-offenders, and reproductive issues for poor black women are often ignored, says Mary Pattillo, professor of sociology and African-American studies at Northwestern University, because "these are issues that can't be portrayed as completely respectable."

One concern that almost everyone shares is the need for more young people to join the organization. Efforts like the National Day of College Preparation have helped increase the number of college chapters to 190, from 50 nine years ago. Younger people are taking on leadership positions. Rick Callender, president of the N.A.A.C.P. branch in San Jose, Calif., is a third-generation member. His mother Norma helped mobilize support for the class action against Denny's in the early 1990s. Callender, 35, says he raised membership in San Jose from just 100 in 2000 to 2,500 in 2004. With an operating budget of $100,000, his local group weighs in on everything from racial profiling to employment discrimination. "For me, it's about giving back," says Callender, a water-company lobbyist, when explaining why he got involved. He is training the next generation of leaders through the chapter's Youth Leadership Academy. After all, the future of the civil rights movement will be in their hands.