There is reported infighting among high-ranking members of the nation's oldest civil rights organization and it's threatening to affect the process of selecting a new president and CEO, reports the Baltimore Sun.
The NAACP's national base in Baltimore has been mired in disagreements over CEO selection, the group's direction, and local chapters' funds, the newspaper reports.
Calling itself the "Leadership of Conscience," a group of about a dozen NAACP board members made their objections known last weekend at the board's annual meeting in New York. During board elections, the group waged an unsuccessful effort to unseat Chairman Julian Bond, the Sun reports.
"There is a significant coalition of opposition formed to push the NAACP forward and to reject the status quo," said J. Whyatt Mondesire of Philadelphia, who was elected to the board last year. "People want to change the agenda and be in the forefront of the civil rights struggle."
Bond contends that board members approved the very selection process to which some now object.
"Of course it worries me if a single member of the board feels that way, but I don't think it is a common feeling," said Bond, 68, the veteran civil rights activist and former Georgia state senator who has been chairman since 1998.
The NAACP continues to reel from the sudden resignation last March of President Bruce S. Gordon after 19 months at the helm. Board members selected the former Verizon executive hoping for a fresh approach and that his corporate connections would boost fundraising. But Gordon and the 64-member board that hired him clashed over philosophy and civil rights strategy.
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