Change and Challenge at the NAACP

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

And our last headline takes us to one of the oldest and best-known civil rights groups in America, the NAACP. Earlier this week, the Baltimore Sun reported it's cutting staff in the group's Baltimore headquarters. It's also shutting most, if not all, of its regional offices. For more, we've got Kelly Brewington. She's been covering the story for the Baltimore Sun. Thanks so much for coming on.

Ms. KELLY BREWINGTON (Reporter, Baltimore Sun): Thank you for having me.

CHIDEYA: Well, I have to give a shout out to Baltimore as I often do, but this is not exactly the happiest of times for Baltimore.

Ms. BREWINGTON: Well…

CHIDEYA: What do these cuts look like, Kelly? How drastic are they?

Ms. BREWINGTON: Well, we're talking somewhere in the neighborhood of perhaps about 30 to 40 people. The Baltimore headquarters has a staff, or at least, has had staff positions equaling about 119 people. The interim President and CEO Dennis Hayes has said they'd like to bring that number to 70. They're doing that by not filling open positions, as well as some layoff.

CHIDEYA: You know, growing up in Baltimore, the NAACP headquarters were really - they were close to the Kmart that we used to go to all the time.

Ms. BREWINGTON: Sure.

CHIDEYA: And people often wonder, well, why would the NAACP even be in Baltimore in terms of its national profile. It's struggled, it seems, to find its place literally geographically as well as now financially. What's the general sense in reporting on this that you're getting from people about how they think of the future of the NAACP?

Ms. BREWINGTON: Well, it's clearly at a crossroads. As you know, the NAACP's leadership had wanted to move its headquarters from Baltimore to Washington. They said last month that that wasn't going to be able to happen because they didn't have the finances to do the move. They had organized a deal with the city council in the district to provide some incentive money, and yet they weren't able to sell their massive property in Northwest Baltimore to accommodate that move.

So they're going to stay in Baltimore for now; the move to Washington is on hold for now. They still don't have a president and CEO since Bruce Gordon left a month - in March, and they're facing their 100th Centennial Anniversary, which is coming in two years, and that's a, you know, going to be a really big event, a time for them to look past - look in the past then look forward to really what they're going to do to fight injustice in the future.

CHIDEYA: You mentioned former President and CEO Bruce Gordon who we had on our program previously. There seemed to be a divide between his approach to viewing the civil rights struggle as one of economic empowerment versus Julian Bond, the head of the board viewing it as more of a traditional civil rights legal justice framework. What do you - you've spoken to a lot of employees on and off the record, what do they think about this whole thing?

Ms. BREWINGTON: Well, I think it's a sense - I think you're dealing with a board that has 64 people, so you're going to have possibly 64 different points of view. You're dealing with a national staff, that's nearly a hundred people, and you have a grassroots membership of several hundred thousand. So, I mean, I think they're a lot of different views as to where the NAACP needs to go from here.

But one thing is very clear, the board and Bruce Gordon did not agree. They were not on the same page as to where to go in the future. And part of that had to do with activism versus social justice programs. Part of that had to do with how to raise money, and, you know, no matter what happens there's going to have to be some kind of cohesive decision on where the NAACP goes from here in order to be effective. And I think - I think everyone agrees on that, but I don't know for certain if they know how to get there.

CHIDEYA: Now, the NAACPs Annual Convention is coming up, do you have any sense of how the group is going to move forward differently, if at all?

Ms. BREWINGTON: Well, the annual convention - it's going to be in Detroit next month, and it's always a time for the organization that their delegates from all over the country to come together and they set policy. They set policy for the next year and they talk about what their main priorities are going to be. It's not clear yet, what those priorities will be. They'll spend all a good deal of time discussing them in the - during the convention days.

And it will be interesting to see if they have a president by then, it doesn't appear as though they will, that's usually a process that takes many months. And Julian Bond usually sets the tone for that convention in his speech to all the convention delegates that usually, kind of, formally opens the convention time. And you know, he's known for giving a fiery, very - sometimes controversial speech, but something that really kind of sets the tone. So I guess we'll - we'll all just be waiting to see what happens then.

CHIDEYA: Kelly, thank you so much…

Ms. BREWINGTON: Oh, sure.

CHIDEYA: …for giving us this inside insight to the NAACP.

Ms. BREWINGTON: Well, thank you for having me.

CHIDEYA: Kelly Brewington is a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.