In some editions yesterday, a photograph of Larry Gibson, the political adviser for Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, was published inadvertently and misidentified as NAACP board Chairman William T. Gibson.
The Sun regrets the error.
NAACP board Chairman William F. Gibson, under fire for alleged financial impropriety, has launched a counterattack against his critics and says he'll likely seek re-election.
Gibson associates are circulating selected NAACP documents to counter syndicated columnist Carl T. Rowan's allegations that the chairman "abused his NAACP credit cards in outlandish ways over a nine-year period" and spent $800,000 of the civil rights group's money.
Dr. Gibson's closest ally on the 64-member board, Floridian T. H. Poole Sr., has put out a list of the "silent majority" that he says stands behind the chairman, despite Mr. Rowan's attacks, while a board-ordered audit of NAACP spending is completed. The audit has not begun yet.
Dr. Gibson, who is recovering from a bout with pneumonia, reiterated in a telephone interview that he had done nothing wrong. He seemed eager to take on Mr. Rowan, who has written seven columns in the past two months alone urging the chairman to resign.
"I think Mr. Rowan is running out of allegations and lies to tell, and getting a little desperate," he said. "He's trying to create some facts to keep it going."
Dr. Gibson doesn't deny spending the money, but says it was not spent improperly or lavishly. And he says that, despite the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's nearly $4 million deficit, he won't second-guess his outlays as chairman.
"I don't think that if you compared it with the chairman of a comparable organization you would find any great disparity," he said. "I wish the hotel rooms had been cheaper, the airline flights had been cheaper, the meals which I have to eat had been cheaper. I would have hoped some [NAACP] branches would have understood if I said I couldn't visit, but that's not the way it is."
Dr. Gibson, a 62-year-old dentist, is a native of Darlington, S.C., the son of a brick mason and a teacher. After interning in Harlem, he settled in Greenville, S.C., in 1959 and became active in the civil rights movement. He has been president of the South Carolina NAACP since 1977 and chairman of the national board of directors since 1985.
The board chairman acknowledged that "some people said I didn't have the elocution to speak on behalf of the NAACP . . . that I was not the quality, not the type people felt should be at the helm of the NAACP.
"That personally did not cause me any consternation," he said. "I never tried to align myself with any elite. . . . We [blacks] can't afford any 'us' and 'them.' "
Critics say Dr. Gibson is enchanted by the spotlight, acts more like a hands-on executive than an arms-length policy-maker and has stacked the board with members whose main qualification is their loyalty to William Frank Gibson.
"We are in a public-relations ditch, and the prestige of this organization has suffered badly," said Marc Stepp, a Detroit board member. "We need people of stature on the board and as executive director to lift us out of the quagmire we're in. "
Admirers say Dr. Gibson, who backed the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. through almost all of his ill-fated 16 months as NAACP executive director, is loyal, tireless, politically adept, absolutely dedicated to civil rights work and, above all, a fighter.
"Dr. Gibson is exactly the chairman you need: He's tough as nails," said Mr. Poole, the Florida board member who calls himself Dr. Gibson's "speaker of the House."
Dr. Gibson spends NAACP money in two ways: by charging expenses to an NAACP American Express card and by receiving a flat stipend (now $36,000 a year) to reimburse him for office expenses, secretarial help, ground transportation and other costs. Dr. Gibson says the stipend is a long-standing perk for the chairman.
Daniel Borochoff, executive director of the American Institute of Philanthropy, a St. Louis group that monitors nonprofits, criticized the stipend as "not the most proper way of handling it. It's more proper to get reimbursed for expenses than to get a flat amount. "
Mr. Rowan, on the basis of internal NAACP documents, says Dr. Gibson has charged nearly $500,000 to the credit card and received a total of $300,000 in stipend checks since 1986.
Dr. Gibson says he doesn't know if he has charged almost half a million dollars -- "the accountants are still figuring it up" -- but that his travels to annual conventions, regional meetings, state conferences, committee sessions, corporate negotiations and speaking engagements were vital to the Baltimore-based NAACP.
"A lot of the visits I made were to solicit dollars. Very few people were sending money by mail," he said.
Dr. Gibson categorically denies any "double-dipping" -- being reimbursed for expenses he already had charged to the credit card -- and supporters have produced records to counter some of Mr. Rowan's allegations.
For example, a copy of a $24,000 check sent to Dr. Gibson in
1988 -- and payable to him personally -- shows that it was deposited in the South Carolina NAACP's account as intended. (Dr. Gibson says the South Carolina NAACP stopped receiving $3,000 a month for expenses from the national office about five years ago.)
The chairman rejects Mr. Rowan's portrait of him as jetting around the country and living lavishly in the best hotels off NAACP funds -- without having pulled a tooth in a decade.
"I do have a dental practice, although it isn't what it was when I started as [NAACP] state conference president almost 18 years ago," he said.
"I've seen no lavish living [on NAACP travel]. We're there, we work, and we get out of town. I stayed in a lot of hotels before I
became chairman of the board, some a lot better than the ones I stay in now. Staying in a hotel is nothing that excites me," he said.
But Julian Bond, a civil rights veteran and Gibson critic who is running for a seat on the national board, said Dr. Gibson should have known the NAACP was "in awful financial shape and watched his own spending more carefully."
Under Dr. Gibson's chairmanship, the NAACP has lost more than $1.4 million alone on the Image Awards, a nationally televised program aimed at boosting black pride and raising funds for the organization.
Although he conceded "there could have been some better handling of it," Dr. Gibson blamed the losses largely on contracts the board inherited when it took control of the program from the NAACP's Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch.
Dr. Gibson says he has done nothing to impede the independent audit of his and other officers' spending from 1989 through August 1994. The board ordered the audit in October, but no auditor has been hired. The chairman said he awaits recommendations from the board's audit committee.
Judge Fred L. Banks Jr., the Mississippi state Supreme Court justice who is chairman of the panel, said selection of an auditor has "just been going slowly, more slowly than expected." He said he hoped the audit would be completed by the board's February meeting, at which Dr. Gibson expects to seek re-election.
Dr. Gibson says that as chairman he doesn't "feel any special obligation" for the NAACP's dire financial condition. But he says he is troubled by what the NAACP calls the temporary layoff of most of its staff, and he has pledged not to accept any expense reimbursements while they are out of work.