NAACP presidential selection process again mired in controversy
28th May 2014 · 0 Comments
By George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – A search firm hired by the NAACP ranked Rev. Frederick D. Haynes, III, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, as the top candidate five years ago to become president and CEO of the NAACP. But Haynes wasn’t the favorite of Julian Bond, then chairman of the board of directors, who preferred Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of a small, private foundation in California, for the spot.
So when the selection process shifted from the search committee to the NAACP’s executive committee, the NAACP’s legendary political maneuvering came into play. At Bond’s urging, the executive committee opted to present only Jealous’ name to the full board for an up-or-down vote. To no one’s surprise, Jealous was elected (34-21).
Though Benjamin L, Hooks, one of the association’s most popular leaders, pastored two churches – one in Memphis and one in Detroit – while serving as executive director of the NAACP from 1977 to 1992, Haynes was told he did not reach the final round of the selection process because he wouldn’t agree to give up his church duties in Dallas.
Haynes felt that was a ruse and the experience left a bitter taste in his mouth, with him vowing the never go through that process again. He could have accepted losing in a fair contest, Haynes told anyone who would listen to him at the time. But what was hard for him to swallow was how a venerated organization dedicated to seeking justice and fairness for African Americans could hold an election for its top office without any pretense of being fair.
When Jealous resigned last September with a year still left on his contract – after repeated clashes with Board Chair Roslyn M. Brock – applying for the vacancy did not cross Haynes’ mind. But apparently, it was on the minds of some NAACP supporters, who hoped the organization could get it right this time – if Haynes would consider going through the search process again.
“I was done with them,” Haynes said in an interview Monday. “As I told them, I do justice work without them. It’s not like I needed them to do what I had already being doing.”
This time, Haynes didn’t pursue the NAACP – they put the full-court press on him.
Unlike five years ago, when the executive committee presented the name of only Ben Jealous to the full board, this time the names of two candidates were advanced: Barbara R. Arnwine, who has been president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law since 1989, and Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice in Newark.
Although he has worked as a lawyer for the Justice Department, the FCC, and at Arnwine’s organization as well as served as director of the Fair Housing Council of Washington, D.C. before heading the New Jersey nonprofit group, Brooks, a graduate of Jackson State University in Mississippi and Yale University Law School, is not well known in national civil rights circles.
According to Board members who interviewed both candidates, they have contrasting personalities. Arnwine, a frequent fixture on television and the conventions of national civil rights organizations, is bold and has a strong personality. Brooks is more understated. Describing him to the Baltimore Sun, former board chairman Julian Bond described him as “the kind of soft-spoken and well-intentioned person I wanted to have in this job.”
Arnwine declined to be interviewed for this article. But one of her supporters on the board said, “All of our civil rights organizations have a problem with a woman serving as their chief, day-to-day spokesperson. Second, the clique that runs the board wants someone they can control, not someone like Barbara, who is talented and her own person.”
Another board member who had no favorite among the finalists said, “This is Ben Jealous all over again. They wanted someone they can control and manipulate. You would think they would have learned by now.”
“I wish Mr. Brooks the best. I really do,” Haynes said. “
This article originally published in the May 26, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
