NEW YORK -- Myrlie B. Evers-Williams, the new chairwoman of the debt-ridden NAACP, vowed yesterday to bind up the organization's self-inflicted wounds and move it back to the forefront of the nation's civil rights movement.
"The challenges we face are great," Mrs. Evers-Williams said at a news conference. "But now we have the unity and sense of purpose to meet those challenges head-on."
She said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would be "very vocal" in backing Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr.'s nomination as U.S. surgeon general and in opposing Republican moves to pass a balanced budget amendment, enact punitive welfare reform and roll back affirmative action.
"The NAACP cannot stand idly by while the new Congress makes life more painfully difficult for ordinary Americans," said Mrs. Evers-Williams, who received a congratulatory call from President Clinton on Saturday night.
Mrs. Evers-Williams ousted Dr. William F. Gibson on a 30-29 vote Saturday of the NAACP's board. Dr. Gibson had been accused of financial improprieties.
The divided board elected several Gibson allies to serve under the new chairwoman as officers, but an Evers-Williams supporter, FranciscoBorges, captured the key post of treasurer. He is a Wall Street executive and former Connecticut state treasurer.
Mr. Borges said yesterday that he would "put in place controls to make sure revenues are distributed in a way all of us can be proud of."
The NAACP has a $4 million deficit, and donations from members, corporations and foundations slowed last year as the group's internal turmoil deepened.
Dr. Gibson, an obscure figure even to most black Americans, was accused of lavish spending, including flying first class, riding with his bodyguards in rented limousines and amassing huge room-service bills by entertaining his entourage in expensive hotel suites.
He received a $3,000 monthly expense "stipend" from the NAACP. On top of that, syndicated columnist Carl T. Rowan reported, he charged nearly $500,000 to NAACP credit cards during his nearly 10 years as chairman. Dr. Gibson denies any wrongdoing.
Mrs. Evers-Williams, 61, said a Coopers & Lybrand audit of NAACP officers' spending would be finished next month. The board ordered the audit in October, but it got under way only this month.
Board member Larry Carter, a Gibson supporter, said a preliminary report showed that NAACP officers, including Dr. Gibson and fired Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., racked up more than $3 million in travel expenses from 1989 to 1994, and $120,000 in limousine rentals alone in 1993 and 1994.
The NAACP Image Awards, a Hollywood television show run by the NAACP board, lost $1.4 million during the past three years and became a symbol of the Gibson regime's financial troubles.
Mrs. Evers-Williams said yesterday that an 11th-hour Gibson agreement with television executives Don Cornelius and Don Jackson to produce the show this year had been put on hold.
A former oil company executive and public official, Mrs. Evers-Williams pledged in a recent interview with The Sun to be prudent with NAACP funds.
"I don't intend for anybody to fly first class. This is a volunteer position with a volunteer organization," she said.
"I certainly think expenses should be paid within reason, and I certainly think anyone who incurs expenses through the organization should be held accountable. My corporate background taught me well how to keep records on each and every thing," she added.
Despite the presence of Gibson holdovers in the organization's leadership, Mrs. Evers-Williams, the first woman to head the 86-year-old NAACP, is expected to have greater support than her one-vote margin of victory would indicate, for several reasons.
First, she holds great moral authority as the widow of Medgar Evers, an NAACP martyr. The late NAACP Mississippi field secretary was murdered outside the family's home in Jackson, Miss., in 1963. (Mrs. Evers-Williams saw his assassin, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, convicted last year.)
Second, several newly elected NAACP board members who support Mrs. Evers-Williams were sworn in near the end of Saturday's marathon board meeting, shifting the board's balance of power in her favor.
The new members, who were not allowed to cast ballots for chairman, include Washington history professor Julian Bond, Tennessee businessman Jesse Turner Jr. and North Carolina government official Carolyn Coleman.
Third, the NAACP rank and file sent a clear message that it wanted change by overwhelmingly approving a vote of no confidence in Dr. Gibson at a tense NAACP annual meeting that preceded Saturday's board leadership showdown.
Finally, the Coopers & Lybrand audit may turn up embarrassing evidence of extravagant spending by NAACP officials during the Gibson era.
Mr. Carter, who supported Dr. Gibson to the end, was confident the often fractious NAACP board could overcome its bickering. "I dTC don't think we hold grudges like in the political arena," he said.
As if on cue, Mr. Carter spotted former Vice Chairman Ben Andrews, a Connecticut investment banker who said he abandoned his support of Dr. Gibson because of "the appearance of corruption and abuse of power at the very top." Mr. Carter went to shake hands.
"He turned on us, and that's why we lost, but . . . " Mr. Carter said with a shrug.
For his part, Mr. Andrews said Saturday's election of officers was the first real exercise of democracy in recent years on the NAACP board. Under Dr. Gibson, he said, official slates of candidates were rubber-stamped.
Traditionally, executive directors, such as Roy Wilkins and Benjamin L. Hooks, have been the public face of the national NAACP and conducted its daily business. But since Dr. Chavis was fired six months ago, there has been a power vacuum at NAACP headquarters in Northwest Baltimore.
Mrs. Evers-Williams said starting the search for a new executive director was a priority. Earl T. Shinhoster, who has been interim senior administrator since Dr. Chavis left, was named acting executive director Saturday night. Board members said the move was not a signal that he is the favored candidate for the job.
Unlike the often defensive Dr. Gibson, Mrs. Evers-Williams is at ease answering reporters' questions and has a commanding presence on television.
After her husband's murder, she moved to California, raised their three children, earned a sociology degree at the age of 35 and worked variously as a lecturer, college administrator, Atlantic Richfield Co. executive and the first black woman on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.
She ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 1970 and for Los Angeles City Council in 1987.
She has been married for 18 years to Walter Edward Williams, a retired California longshoreman and union organizer. In 1989, they moved to Bend, Ore.
Mr. Williams, 76, is battling prostate cancer, but he encouraged his wife to challenge Dr. Gibson, she said, "because he feels the NAACP must be saved for the benefit of all of us."