
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 22, 1994                   TAG: 9408220106
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                  LENGTH: Medium

NAACP SIZES UP POST-CHAVIS DAMAGE

The NAACP began looking Sunday for a new leader and tried to measure how much damage Benjamin Chavis' painful ouster had caused its reputation in the world of civil rights.

The NAACP turned to its interim administrator, Earl Shinhoster, 42, who had competed against Chavis for the executive director post. Shinhoster, NAACP national field secretary, met Sunday with a board-appointed committee to come up with a short-term plan for handling day-to-day operations until a new executive director is hired.

``What I am trying to do is get all the parameters together, and resolve them in my own mind,'' Shinhoster said before the meeting. He declined further comment.

Meanwhile, a worn but defiant Chavis picked up the remnants of a black leadership summit that was to start Sunday in Baltimore but was postponed by the NAACP. He pledged not to ``let the lynching that took place here stop us.''

``This is not in response to my firing. Everybody's in town, ready to go forward,'' he told NBC-TV's ``Sunday Today.'' Instead of meeting at NAACP headquarters in Baltimore, the gathering was shifted to two nearby churches.

Chavis, 46, was fired Saturday for conduct that the board of directors said was hostile to the survival of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The group's board of directors hopes to find a successor within 30 to 90 days.

Joseph Lowery, president of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said he hoped the NAACP did not fire Chavis due to ``influence by forces outside the African-American community,'' as Chavis alleged. ``This would be a grievous and tragic mistake,'' Lowery said.

While Chavis' dismissal was triggered by his decision to settle a former employee's sex discrimination claims for $332,400, board Chairman William Gibson said Chavis was removed because of ``an accumulation of things'' that occurred during his combative 16-month tenure.

Largest among them was Chavis' alliance with controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, which many NAACP officials took as a sign that Chavis was moving the NAACP into a separatist posture.

by CNB