Beyond Black and White by Manning Marable

Author:Manning Marable
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books

THIRTEEN

BENJAMIN CHAVIS AND THE

CRISIS OF BLACK LEADERSHIP

The 1994 controversy over the tenure of Benjamin Chavis as executive director of the NAACP, which resulted in his firing, was the culmination of a campaign of vilification that had lasted for nearly nine months. In August 1994 the NAACP’s board voted overwhelmingly to dismiss Chavis, stating that he had failed adequately to explain the use of the organization’s funds to settle a threatened lawsuit by former employee Mary E. Stansel. Abandoned by his principal supporter, NAACP president William Gibson, Chavis felt bitterly betrayed. Within days, he filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia Superior Court, demanding his reinstatement as executive director. To the media, Chavis angrily blamed outside forces for manipulating the board’s vote, and described his ousting as a “crucifixion.” Earl Shinhoster, the Association’s field secretary, was selected by the board to replace Chavis temporarily. Within less than a year, Gibson himself was narrowly defeated for the NAACP presidency by Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of martyred activist Medgar Evers.

Chavis and his closest associates referred to his involuntary departure from the NAACP leadership as a “lynching.” But in truth, the ousting of Chavis as head of the oldest civil-rights organization in America had little to do with Mary Stansel, or the fact that Chavis was no wizard at financial management. One of the central questions at the heart of the controversy was whether African-American people have the right to select their own leaders and make them accountable to our concerns and demands. Who speaks for black people in this country? And do we have the right to develop strategies which address our own concerns and advocate programs which advance our interests? Is it possible to develop a political process and framework that brings together black organizations and institutions which reflect a wide variety of perspectives, yet work in concert toward constructive goals and objectives? The debate over Chavis represents a greater dilemma, the crisis of black leadership in America, in the aftermath of the civil-rights movement of a generation ago.

Following the desegregation campaigns and legislative reforms of the 1960s, the NAACP and the civil-rights movement were confronted with four basic challenges, which they never fully understood or overcame. First, the economic crisis of America’s inner cities created profound problems for black leadership. Jobs disappeared in the ghetto, as thousands of plants and factories relocated to the suburbs and the sunbelt. Second, the fiscal crisis of federal, state and local governments reduced funds for social programs. Reaganism represented a war against the cities, and African-Americans and Latinos were the chief victims of that war. Civil-rights organizations were challenged to shift their energies from cooperating with the federal government to obtain legal and political reforms, to pressuring Congress and the White House to reverse regressive and repressive social programs. As Republican administrations increasingly relied on expansion of the prison system as the primary means of social control over the black community, the NAACP and other organizations were pushed by blacks from all social classes to become more militant and aggressive.

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