Activist Julian Bond selected as NAACP chairman

Julian Bond

February 21, 1998
Web posted at: 9:36 p.m. EST (0236 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The NAACP on Saturday chose veteran civil-rights activist and history professor Julian Bond as its new chairman.

Bond, 58, was elected by a 29-24 vote of the Baltimore-based organization's 64-member board of directors. One member abstained.

"I want to make sure the NAACP's voice is heard wherever race is discussed in the country -- whether it's in the White House or the Congress, or in the state capitals or city halls, or in CEOs' offices, or in the workplace," Bond said.

Bond on Tuesday competed for the unpaid position against five other candidates after a number of board members urged him to run, he said.

Bond is a distinguished scholar-in-residence at American University in Washington, D.C., and a faculty member in the history department at the University of Virginia. He's also a frequent radio and television commentator and chairman of the NAACP's publication Crisis Magazine.

A former Georgia state lawmaker, Bond left politics after losing a congressional race to fellow civil rights veteran John Lewis in 1986.

Evers-Williams remains on board

Bond replaces Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of slain Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who had held the top NAACP post for the past three years and buoyed the organization through several potentially crippling scandals.

In 1994, Executive Director Benjamin Chavis Jr. was fired after a sexual harassment scandal and charges of mismanagement that left the organization with a debt of $4.8 million.

In December, board member Hazel Dukes of New York City was ousted after she admitted pilfering more than $13,000 from a leukemia-stricken associate who had trusted Dukes with her finances.

During her tenure, Evers-Williams chose former U.S. congressman Kweisi Mfume as the NAACP's president and chief executive officer. Together they reorganized, cut back staff and produced a budget surplus that now tops $2 million. Evers-Williams will remain a member of the NAACP board.

Evers-Williams, 64, said she was departing after accomplishing her mission of helping save the civil rights organization from "the financial, moral and organizational morass in which we found ourselves." She had announced earlier this month that she would not seek a fourth one-year term.

Son of the movement

Bond has been a participant in the civil rights and peace movements since he led sit-in demonstrations as an Atlanta college student in the 1960s.

He was elected to a one-year term to Georgia's House of Representatives in 1965, but members voted to deny Bond his seat because of his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War. Later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Georgia House had violated Bond's rights.

Bond served four terms in the state House before winning election to the state Senate in 1974, where he then served six terms.

Other candidates for the chairman's position were Joe Madison, a Maryland radio host; Lenny Springs, a North Carolina banker; Leon Russell, a human rights official in Florida; Marc Stepp, a Detroit labor union executive; and Charles Whitehead, a utilities executive from Kentucky.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is the country's oldest civil rights organization.

The 500,000-member group was founded in 1909 and currently has branches in all 50 states. The organization's historical emphasis has been ending discrimination through legal challenges, such as its 1954 victory before the Supreme Court in the "Brown vs. Board of Education" case, eliminating segregation in public schools.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related story:

• NAACP ousts civil rights activist - December 20, 1997

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• NAACP Online

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