ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 12, 1995 TAG: 9512120074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BALTIMORE
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
TO SET THE NAACP back on its feet, its new leader will face several tough courses of action - all at once.
With Kweisi Mfume tapped to be the NAACP's new president, black leaders are expressing confidence that he can restore credibility and fiscal health to the venerable civil rights organization.
They agree that Mfume must do several things simultaneously: raise money to wipe out a $3.2 million debt; assemble a leadership team; streamline the NAACP's unwieldy internal apparatus; and assume a high profile on national issues of concern to blacks.
From Chairman Myrlie Evers-Williams, who has worked to rebuild confidence in the NAACP since her election in February, to local volunteers, there is a sense that Mfume's willingness to take the job means the 86-year-old National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has turned the corner.
``The good old ship did not go down,'' an elated Evers-Williams said over the weekend. ``It righted itself, and it's full sail ahead.
``When I was elected, so many people were not sure I could do it ... We brought it off, and nobody knew,'' she said, referring to the secrecy that shrouded the choice of Mfume.
Evers-Williams said that when Mfume becomes president and chief executive officer, the NAACP's renewed vitality would start to be felt.
Mfume, a Baltimore Democrat who is in his fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, said Saturday he would leave his ``safe'' seat to head the NAACP. The $200,000-a-year job has been vacant since August 1994, when the NAACP board fired the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. for alleged misuse of funds.
The new leader must ``tap into the growing activism taking place in the African-American community without the NAACP, as clearly reflected in the Million Man March'' in October, said the Rev. Bowyer G. Freeman , chairman of the NAACP region covering Maryland, the District of Columbia and Virginia.
The NAACP did not endorse the October event, which was black Americans' largest demonstration ever. Spearheaded by Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, the rally drew hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington. Mfume, who has maintained a cordial relationship with Farrakhan, addressed the rally.
Carl O. Snowden, an Annapolis, Md., activist, said Mfume, 47, could bridge the gap between followers of Farrakhan and adherents of the NAACP's coalition-building approach - as well as the generational divide between black youths and their elders.
``This is not an elitist, by any stretch of the imagination,'' Snowden said. ``He embodies the whole notion of the self-reliant, self-made man, and, on the other hand, he is polished and refined.''
Mfume grew up poor in Baltimore, quit high school and fathered five children out of wedlock before turning his life around. He eventually earned a master's degree and became one of the most successful black politicians of his generation.
Mfume has vaulted into America's handful of top black leaders, and he needs to assert the NAACP's influence quickly to fight for federal funding of social programs, said Ronald Walters, a Howard University political scientist.
He said the NAACP's internal problems - the legacy of the ill-fated tenures of Chavis and former Chairman William F. Gibson - also would require triage.
``His task is daunting, and it's not just money,'' Walters said.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Kweisi Mfume told reporters Monday in Washingtonby CNBthat the nation's oldest civil rights group is ``not dead yet.''