Pages from the Archives
By DEWAYNE WICKHAM
The search for Benjamin Hooks’ successor got off to a slow start. The search committee created by the NAACP’ s board didn’ t settle into its work until October 1992. That’ s because it needed to raise money to fund its activities. Ernest Green, the committee’ s chair, asked two of the NAACP’ s long-time funding sources for help. In November, The Rockefeller Foundation responded with a $ 40,000 grant, and The Ford Foundation contributed $ 75,000 to the search committee’ s $ 208,000 budget.
Three of the panel’ s four subcommittees were headed by loyalists of William Gibson, the NAACP board chairman. One— the Candidate Subcommittee— was led by Laura Blackburne, a New York attorney. Blackburne was not a board member. She and Percy Sutton were named to the 21-member search committee after board member Hazel Dukes pressed Gibson to appoint some of her supporters to the panel.“ My position was if you’ ve got 19, why worry about two,” Gibson would later say in explaining his decision to appoint two allies of Dukes’— an opposition leader with the board— to the search committee.
His concession was of little consequence. The selection criteria and screening subcommittees were headed by Gibson cronies, board members T. H. Poole and Franklin Breckenridge. Gibson chaired the subcommittee tee
that interviewed the finalists for the job.
The Search Committee produced two lists of candidates. One was a“ wish list” of people whom members of the full committee wanted considered for the position, and the other was comprised of those persons who applied for the job. Among the 30 people who submitted applications to the confidential selection process were TransAfrica president Randall Robinson; Julianne Malveaux, a columnist and radio talk show host; Bobby Doctor, acting staff director of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights; Kelly Alexander, Jr., an NAACP board member and son of the former board chairman; Delano Lewis, president and CEO of the C & P Telephone Company and the Rev. Benjamin Chavis, executive director of the United Church of Christ’ s Commission for Racial Justice.
Board members recommended 43 other candidates. This wish list
included comedians Dick Gregory and Bill Cosby; Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Earl Shinholster, an NAACP regional director; journalist Charlayne Hunter- Gault; former U. N. ambassador Andrew Young; Jewell Jackson McCabe, founder of the Coalition of 100 Black Women; California Rep. Maxine Waters; Wade Henderson, Hazel Dukes, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Green sent copies of both lists to committee members on Jan. 12, 1993, but it seemed to be of little consequence because while the formal selection process was just getting underway, a back-channel effort was being made to strike a deal with Jackson.
Well before the committee produced a list of finalists, Gibson, Green, and Sutton met with Jackson in Greenville, S. C., to talk about the possibility of the two-time candidate for the Democratic Party’ s presidential nomination becoming the NAACP’ s next executive director. The meeting
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