The NAACP has a proud history of overcoming racial barriers, but now its North Carolina conference is being stymied by internal obstacles.
Infighting within the state conference and between it and the national NAACP have caused financial troubles and mismanagement of the organization that seeks, as the its mission statement says, “to eliminate discrimination, and accelerate the well-being, education and economic security of Black people and all persons of color."
The extent of the state NAACP’s troubles was revealed this week in a report by The News & Observer’s Lars Dolder and Dan Kane. The IRS has revoked the North Carolina chapter’s tax-exempt status because the organization failed to file tax returns for three consecutive years. Local NAACP branches across the state have also lost their tax-exempt status for the same reason.
That IRS action could lead to fines and impair the state NAACP’s ability to raise funds. Meanwhile, a review of the chapters financed by NC NAACP Treasurer Gerald Givens Jr. found that more than $1 million has been spent without proper authorization and documentation.
These problems are concerning, but fixable. Getting the state NAACP’s house back in order will require admitting the failures and healing the divisions among its leadership. Unfortunately those steps are not being taken.
Instead, the organization has avoided discussion of its internal problems. Key current and former leaders declined to speak to The News & Observer or did not respond to requests for comment. That includes Givens, NC NAACP President Deborah Maxwell, national NAACP General Counsel Janette McCarthy Wallace, former NC NAACP President Rev. William Barber II and Gloria Sweet-Love, president of the Tennessee NAACP who was appointed in 2019 to administer the North Carolina conference while the organization is in flux.
One person who might have shed light on the issues was the late Rev. Anthony Spearman, who led the state NAACP from 2017 to 2021, and was ousted after a disputed election. He died in July at his home in Greensboro at 71. Uncertainty surrounds the circumstances of his death. The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating.
It’s regrettable — and for its members and supporters it should be unacceptable — that the state NAACP has let rivalries and accusations hobble the organization and that key figures are silent about the causes and the solutions. The NAACP has made history by opening doors that were shut to Black Americans and other minorities. Now it needs to open its own.
The cause of the NAACP remains vital to the protection of rights in the nation and in North Carolina. Indeed the NC NAACP is the plaintiff in a recent landmark case decided by the North Carolina Supreme Court. The court found that an illegally gerrymandered legislature does not have legitimate authority to place amendments to the state constitution on the ballot.
One of the challenged amendments is a cap on income taxes, a change that that could one day limit state funding for education and health care and promote a more regressive tax system. Another would require all voters to show legally specified photo IDs, a change that could limit access to the polls by lower-income people.
Thurgood Marshall became the first Black member of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 after a brilliant career of fighting for civil rights as the leader of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Education Fund. For all the racial progress he helped advance, he knew that the struggle for equal rights was far from finished.
“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories,” he said. “We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. … We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”
At a time when voting rights are again in jeopardy and democracy is under threat, the state NAACP also has no choice. It must do better to help North Carolina do better.
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