Washington. -- Myrlie Evers-Williams and a new team of NAACP leaders will save and build the NAACP. But for real redemption and respect to flower into power, we who love the NAACP must face with brutal honesty what brought this once-great civil-rights organization into poverty and disrepute.
It was lust! A craven lust for power. An evil lust for money. And a morbid lust for sex.
Disaster was rooted a decade ago when a little-known man of no national stature became chairman of the board. William F. Gibson immediately began a campaign to drive out then-Executive Director Benjamin Hooks, to pack the board with cronies, and to change the NAACP constitution and bylaws so he could rule with ruthless, dictatorial power.
When a search committee picked the Rev. Jesse Jackson as its first choice to succeed Mr. Hooks, Dr. Gibson's lust for money almost made him risk a Jackson challenge to his authority and his ego.
But Mr. Jackson rebuffed the chairman's demand that he agree that Dr. Gibson would have an unlimited expense account, get a stipend (that is, a salary for a "volunteer") and money for an "office" in Greenville, South Carolina.
Dr. Gibson added that Mr. Jackson would also have to agree that the chairman would make all decisions between meetings of the board.
Dr. Gibson's lust for power and money caused Mr. Jackson to write to him on April 7, 1993: "It would not be in the best interest of the NAACP membership for me to continue to permit my name to be considered for the office of NAACP Executive Director. . . . I have just learned of and had a chance to reflect upon some of your proposed changes in the Constitution and Bylaws. . . . These changes would greatly . . . weaken the executive director. . . . A strong director -- with meaningful powers and duties -- is essential to a strong NAACP."
Dr. Gibson went down to No. 4 on the search team's list and found someone who would go along with his lusts for both money and power. He chose Benjamin Chavis Jr., and that fateful decision bared to the nation a pitiful truth about how much lust for sex had corrupted the organization.
The $126,000 limousine bill to one company, Red Top, was run up by Dr. Chavis and his male buddies who cruised the sex scenes of Washington and Baltimore. Dr. Chavis was fired after pledging $332,000 of NAACP money in a futile effort to hush up a former employee who claimed he fired her "at the end of an adulterous affair." Other settlements and charges of sexual harassment have tarnished terribly the reputation of an organization that was founded to fight for the rights of women, as well as racial minorities and the poor.
Whole civilizations have crumbled under the weight of the lusts cited above. Neither I nor anyone else knows that better than Myrlie Evers-Williams. I pray that she will be able to lead the NAACP out of a dark decade of enslavement to the worst of human frailties.
Carl T. Rowan is a syndicated columnist.