Freeport, New York. -- Speaker after speaker at last week's annual meeting of the NAACP denounced the profligate, destructive spending habits of Dr. William F. Gibson, but the organization's board of directors ousted him as chairman by a margin of just one vote.
Dr. Gibson's unchecked spending was a major reason for the NAACP's whopping $4-million-plus debt, but his most egregious wrong was not in helping to drive the veteran civil-rights organization into near bankruptcy, but in severely damaging its once-illustrious reputation that so many had helped to build at the cost of their lives.
No previous board would have countenanced such blind arrogance. In 1983, when Margaret Bush Wilson, then chairman of the NAACP board, unilaterally suspended Benjamin L. Hooks as executive director because she felt he was not providing the organization with effective leadership, the board summarily removed her within a week. Ironically, it was Dr. Gibson who moved during a special meeting of the board to oust Ms. Wilson. The board then was much different from the one he subsequently created after becoming chairman in 1986 with his hand- picked supporters. Fully in control, Dr. Gibson in 1993 finally forced out Dr. Hooks.
A dentist from Greenville, South Carolina, Dr. Gibson ascended from small-town obscurity to the national spotlight when he became chairman. But if capturing that position filled an ambition, winning the respect that should have been inherent in the chairmanship eluded him. Normally friendly, he could not shed his small-town, back-country demeanor. From the day he was elected, some prominent NAACP figures made it clear that they regarded Dr. Gibson as an embarrassment. Only his ability to win fiercely loyal friends made it so difficult to dislodge him.
In unseating Dr. Gibson, having accomplished what no other board member could have done, Myrlie Evers-Williams faces an unprecedented challenge.
Not only must she mold a highly divided board into a cohesive and effective policy-making body, but she has to guide the rebuilding of an effective staff and find a competent executive director who has some knowledge of, and appreciation for, the NAACP's history. She must repair the organization's tarnished image and quickly reduce its debts so that it can regird itself to fight the Republican juggernaut on civil rights and social programs.
Any lesser person would have wilted before that challenge. Having seen her previous husband Medgar sacrifice his life for the struggle in their hometown Jackson, Mississippi, 32 years ago, she has now taken up his mantle. To succeed, Ms. Evers-Williams must be mindful of the traps that destroyed both Ms. Wilson and Dr. Gibson.
One of her first steps as chairman, therefore, should be to create a blue-ribbon advisory panel of people whose unselfish commitment to implementing the NAACP's egalitarian philosophy is unquestioned. The mere existence of the panel would confirm the NAACP's raison d'etre.
Her next step must be to choose an executive director capable of restoring the organization's integrity and winning for it the respect that made it the flagship of the civil-rights movement for much of this century. Mrs. Evers-Williams knows that throughout its most effective periods, it was the executive director rather than the chairman who built the NAACP's public persona and reputation as a legendary fighting machine.
Denton L. Watson, author of "Lion in the Lobby, Clarence Mitchell, Jr.'s Struggle for the Passage of Civil Rights Laws," was formerly public-relations director for the NAACP.