Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509110040
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At issue are complaints by two former employees of Total Action Against Poverty, a Roanoke community action agency. The employees - Gloria Dowe and Edward Mitchell - had asked the NAACP to investigate complaints that their job dismissals were discriminatory and improperly handled.
The NAACP chose not to intervene. Some branch members contend it was because Green is a member of TAP's board of directors.
"Because of his involvement on the [TAP] board of directors, Rev. Green has failed to properly represent" the former TAP employees, members wrote in a letter to Myrlie Evers-Williams, the national chairwoman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "We feel that Rev. Green is not able to effectively represent the chapter due to his outside activities."
The members, Gloria Dowe included, have asked the national NAACP to investigate. A spokeswoman at the national office said she didn't know if the office had received the members' letter and an attached 18-signature petition.
Green last week said he had not known about the letter until a reporter told him about it.
"I think it's a dirty trick they're playing," he said. "I think they should have come to me first. And I don't appreciate it at all."
Green acknowledged the appearance of a conflict of interest but said that his serving as president of the Roanoke branch and on the TAP board "didn't get in the way" of how the branch handled the employees' complaints.
"That's just the way these people feel," he said. "That petition doesn't mean a thing."
Green said the complaints were handled like any others. He maintained there was no position the branch could take on either case.
"We've gone as far as we can go," Green said. "They can take legal action. But the [Roanoke] NAACP doesn't have money to furnish a lawyer."
Dowe said she and Mitchell only asked that the NAACP consider looking into their complaints. She said Green was "unresponsive. We didn't feel that he was interested in our cases."
Members had urged Green to resign from the TAP board. Green called a special meeting of the chapter's executive board in July to discuss that suggestion.
"Every member there said I had no reason to get off the [TAP] board," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it was resolved."
Some members contend that not all executive board members were told of that meeting - only those who would side favorably with Green. They contend that branch members who were not on the executive board were told of the meeting and attended.
"We do not wish upon our local chapter the bad publicity that the national chapter has been receiving," members wrote in their letter to Evers-Williams, referring to financial and management controversies under former national Chairman Benjamin Chavis. "We are trying to keep our members instead of losing them."
The national NAACP can suspend or remove an officer or member if, after a full hearing, he or she is "guilty of conduct not in accord with the principles, aims and purposes" of the NAACP, according to the organization's constitution and by-laws.
Green was elected chapter president in 1992 and re-elected in 1994. He also served as chapter president in the early 1970s.
Green said he does not intend to step down voluntarily.
"I'm not stepping down from anywhere," he said. "I was elected, and I'm going to serve until my term is up in December 1996."
by CNB