A group of distinguished, high-profile black Americans willdemand, at a 3 p.m. press conference at the National Press Club, thatWilliam F. Gibson resign immediately as chairman of thealmost-bankrupt civil rights organization.
Gibson has been accused - first in this column - of charginghundreds of thousands of dollars in air travel, hotel bills, hometowncar rentals and personal meals and other items to an NAACP AmericanExpress card, even while taking hundreds of thousands of dollars inNAACP checks for undocumented "travel" and other expenses.
This group, the NAACP SOS (Save Our Ship) Committee, willannounce that if Gibson refuses to relinquish his dictatorial controlof the nation's oldest civil rights organization, it will go intofederal court to force the independent audit of his uses of NAACPfunds that the national board of directors ordered on Oct. 15.
This SOS group will be armed with new information that I amrevealing today about the procedures through which Gibson and hisclosest allies lost at least $1.2 million of NAACP funds in two yearsafter they took over the previously profitable Hollywood ImageAwards.
NAACP Director John J. Mance of Granada Hills, Calif., hasprotested to me that he had only a minimum role as "check signer" inthe Image Awards fiasco. He faxed to me the following:
"The Image Awards Committee has an executive committee whosemembers have been T. H. Poole (chairman), Thomas Turner and Kelly M.Alexander Jr. There are separate bank accounts to handle the variousphases of an Image Awards Program, including a production account onwhich I, John Mance, have been a signer."
In a telephone conversation, Mance explained that Poole, ofFlorida, "would cut a check, sign it and send it to me to cosign andthen deliver" to the payee. He said several checks that he signedwere in excess of $50,000, and others of smaller amounts were forsuch things as limousines.
Asked if he was certain that the checks he signed and deliveredwere payable to people who actually had done NAACP work, Mance said,"I just assumed that. Perhaps that was a mistake. But I was smartenough to keep copies of some of the checks I signed."
Mance declined to give me copies of checks or the names of anypayees, but said he wanted to emphasize that he personally "never gota dime."
Note that the directors who Mance said "ran the show" - Poole,Alexander of North Carolina and Turner of Detroit - are Gibson'sclosest cronies.
Board members calling for the resignations of Gibson and Poolesay that Poole has "gone bananas," and even stalked out of boardmeetings when asked for an accounting of Image Awards funds.
The SOS committee that will demand Gibson's resignation has beendrawn together by C. Delores Tucker, an NAACP trustee and chairman ofthe Democratic National Committee Black Caucus. Among othersdemanding that Gibson step down will be senior federal Judge RobertCarter of New York, who once was the NAACP's top lawyer; DorothyHeight, longtime president of the National Council of Negro Women;Damon Keith of Detroit, an NAACP Spingarn medalist and a judge on theU.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals; Frances Murphy of Baltimore,publisher of the Afro-American newspapers; Roger Wilkins, universityprofessor and nephew of Roy Wilkins, the late, revered NAACPexecutive director; Clifford Alexander, former secretary of the Army;Percy Sutton, noted businessman and broadcast executive; and laborleader William Lucy, whose AFL-CIO pledged $20,000 to pay for theaudit.
As of today, no audit has begun and no auditor has been chosen.Part of the problem is that the NAACP executive committee, chaired byGibson, must approve any auditors and auditing procedures recommendedby the special audit committee, chaired by Judge Fred Banks of theMississippi Supreme Court. Gibson has not recused himself frommaking the final decision as to who may to what degree audit hisexpenditures.
Some audit firms have said they fear being tarnished by enteringthis scandal. The one firm that has offered a proposal to audit,Mitchell Titus & Company, reportedly wants at least $60,000, whichthe NAACP doesn't have. Some board members oppose using MitchellTitus because it has been the NAACP's regular auditor and failed todiscern or report abuses of funds by fired Executive DirectorBenjamin Chavis, who had hush money paid to a woman charging sexualharassment.
Lucy, who had approved some AFL-CIO financing of an audit, sayshe is now convinced that the NAACP crisis "can never be solved withGibson in control," so he is joining today's call for his immediateresignation.
Carl T. Rowan is a nationally syndicated columnist of theChicago Sun-Times.
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий