ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607080080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHARLOTTE, N.C.
SOURCE: Associated Press
Under new leadership and with fewer financial problems, the NAACP opened its 87th annual convention Saturday with a pledge to tackle new threats to the empowerment of blacks.
``It is clearly time to bring a new sense of compassion and a new sense of understanding to our nation,'' NAACP President and CEO Kweisi Mfume said at a news conference. ``Few organizations are more ready, willing and able to help create that new climate than the NAACP.''
He said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which last year suffered from a lack of leadership, internal strife and a multimillion-dollar debt, has been renewed by the need to fight the ``national scourge of intolerance and insensitivity.'' The most prominent examples of that scourge, he said, have been fires at churches across the country.
The fires and the ``unwarranted attacks'' by the Supreme Court on minority voting districts and affirmative action programs will be discussed at the convention, he said.
The convention ends Thursday.
A session Wednesday will focus on the church fires, the same day President Clinton is expected to visit.
Bob Dole, the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee, has yet to accept an invitation to address the gathering Tuesday.
Mfume, a former Maryland congressman now four months into his tenure as head of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization, has good news to share with members when he speaks to them Monday.
The organization's debt has been reduced by more than half since Mfume came aboard in February - from $3.2 million to about $1.5 million as of May, he said. Figures expected next week are likely to show the debt at slightly less than $1 million, he added.
Myrlie Evers-Williams, chairman of the 64-member board of directors, credited the organization's membership with the dramatic turnaround.
``That says an awful lot about the faith and trust that people and our branches have in the organization,'' Evers-Williams said at the news conference. ``It has been an exciting time ... perhaps one of the most challenging times that this organization has had.''
Mfume said a combination of factors helped reduce the debt, including contributions from individual donors and corporations and efforts by the organization to control spending tightly.
Evers-Williams said the NAACP earned nearly $400,000 from its recently televised Image Awards - the first time that's happened in five years.
Both Mfume and Evers-Williams spoke optimistically about the future of the organization as it gears up for the November elections and steps up efforts to counter church fires and Supreme Court rulings striking down affirmative action initiatives and minority voting districts.
In the past two years, the NAACP has been resolving its troubles.
Its previous executive director, the Rev. Benjamin Chavis, was fired in 1994 after the disclosure that he used NAACP funds to quiet sexual harassment allegations against him. Evers-Williams was elected in early 1995 to set the organization on a new course, and she helped bring Mfume along.
Last month, a jury said the NAACP was not financially liable for the agreement Chavis negotiated with his accuser - a decision that effectively closed the book on a turbulent chapter in the organization's history.
That all should be encouraging news for members, Mfume said.
``What we're saying to people is that it's all right now to return to supporting this organization,'' he said in an interview with a local television station. ``There is a clarion call going out to supporters across this country to come back home to the NAACP.''
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP NAACP President Kweisi Mfume laughs with theby CNBchairman of the board of directors, Myrlie Evers-Williams, at the
civil rights group's 87th annual convention in Charlotte, N.C.