NEW YORK -- In his rise through the ranks, NAACP Chairman William F. Gibson learned the internal politics of the nation's largest civil rights group by counting votes for leaders of the unpredictable 64-member board of directors.
Tomorrow, Dr. Gibson, 62, who has been NAACP chairman since 1985, will have to size up his own support in the face of an electoral challenge from Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers, the NAACP Mississippi field secretary slain in 1963.
It is a vote that will not only determine the direction of Dr. Gibson's civil rights career, but which could also shape the debt-ridden NAACP's future.
Yesterday, as board members gathered for the showdown over NAACP leadership in New York, Dr. Gibson fired the first salvo. He announced a plan to resurrect the "NAACP Image Awards," a television show that has lost $1.4 million since the board took it over in 1991.
Dr. Gibson said television producers Don Cornelius and Don Jackson would tape the show June 13 and arrange for its broadcast.
The NAACP and the producers had made a profit-sharing deal, Dr. Gibson said, in which Mr. Cornelius and Mr. Jackson would put up the money to make the show and the NAACP would not be liable for any losses. No details were released.
But Hazel N. Dukes, a Gibson critic, vowed to contest the deal because it was not approved by the full board. She said the DTC board voted in October to make no decision on the "Image Awards" until it "understood the details in full."
"If they've got a deal, it's not a deal," she said.
Ms. Dukes is among seven board members and trustees who have gone into federal court in Baltimore to try to force Dr. Gibson out.
They filed suit after syndicated columnist Carl T. Rowan, citing internal NAACP documents, reported that Dr. Gibson charged nearly $500,000 in expenses on an NAACP credit card and received $300,000 in "stipends" at a time when the civil rights organization was $4 million in debt. A long-delayed audit of NAACP officers' expenses got under way this month.
Dr. Gibson denies any wrongdoing. He acknowledges receiving $3,000 a month to cover NAACP expenses as well as running up a hefty credit card bill as chairman, a volunteer position. But he says all the expenses, even the purchase of a $600 briefcase, were necessary.
His supporters say the chairman has the votes on the board to retain his post.
"Dr. Gibson takes no quarter and he don't give none," said T. H. Poole Sr., who calls himself the chairman's "speaker of the House." "He's tough as nails."
Born in Darlington, S.C., William Frank Gibson was the son of a brick mason and a teacher. He grew up in the Jim Crow South and was educated at historically black colleges. He studied biology at North Carolina A. & T. State University and dentistry at Meharry Medical College.
After an internship in Harlem, the young dentist returned to South Carolina in 1959 to set up a private practice. He soon was active with the Greenville NAACP, registering blacks to vote and desegregating lunch counters.
Dr. Gibson slowly worked his way up to the top of the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He says his civil rights work has reduced his dental practice by nearly half over the years.
In 1977, he became president of the South Carolina NAACP (a position he still holds). He has organized protests to push for the hiring of more blacks in government agencies and led marches to demand that South Carolina stop flying a Confederate flag over its Capitol.
The same year he was elected to the national board.
"Gibson was a back-bencher, not a major player at all. He supported the old-timers and learned his politics from them," said board member Joseph E. Madison, a former Gibson ally who is now a leading opponent.
Dr. Gibson indirectly owes his chairmanship to one of the NAACP's internal battles.
In a 1983 power struggle, Chairwoman Margaret Bush Wilson tried and failed to fire the Rev. Benjamin L. Hooks as executive director. Instead, she was ousted and North Carolinian Kelly M. Alexander Sr. succeeded her as chairman.
Mr. Alexander installed his South Carolina protege, Bill Gibson, as vice chairman. When Mr. Alexander died unexpectedly in 1985, Dr. Gibson became chairman.
The late chairman's son, Kelly M. Alexander Jr., a Gibson loyalist on the board, called the dentist an "old-time, street-level civil rights fighter" and an astute politician who learned to line up votes.
Dr. Gibson's critics say the chairman, like a machine politician, has loaded the board with plodding loyalists who derive prestige from their membership rather than lend the NAACP prestige by their presence. But his admirers say Dr. Gibson has given the NAACP a stronger grass-roots presence.
In 1992, in a showdown with Mr. Bond and Ms. Dukes, then-NAACP president, Dr. Gibson dodged a move to limit the chairman to six years in office. Then, in what Gibson critics call a purge, Ms. Dukes was voted out as president and Mr. Bond was dropped from the official slate of board candidates. He ran on his own and lost.
Mr. Bond and Ms. Dukes are now among Dr. Gibson's chief opponents.
The NAACP's biggest internal battle came last summer. The Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., the organization's executive director, was found to have authorized up to $332,400 in NAACP funds -- without telling the board -- to settle a threatened sexual harassment suit by former aide Mary E. Stansel.
Dr. Gibson at first defended Dr. Chavis, who succeeded Dr. Hooks in 1993. He had traveled the nation with Dr. Chavis as the 45-year-old executive director sought to spark young blacks' interest in the graying civil rights group. He had defended Dr. Chavis' courting of black separatist leader Louis Farrakhan in the name of African-American unity.
But soon the chairman's nose-counting prowess took over. He put out the word before the Aug. 20 meeting on Dr. Chavis' fate that board members should vote their consciences. They fired Dr. Chavis.
Now, six months later, the NAACP board must decide whether to re-elect Dr. Gibson or to vest control in Ms. Evers-Williams, a retired college administrator and former member of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.
Since she has not been involved in past battles among board factions, Ms. Evers-Williams is viewed by some as a candidate who could heal the NAACP. "Maybe the board should simply say it's time for a fresh new start for the organization," Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said yesterday.
Mr. Madison said tomorrow's vote will be close, but that a report on CBS-TV's "60 Minutes" that Dr. Gibson spent $600 in NAACP funds to buy a briefcase has enraged the rank and file.