For decades, the public face of North Carolina’s NAACP has been an energetic organization unbending in its fight against injustice.
But in the last few years, the group has struggled with internal conflict, disciplinary action from its national organization and financial turmoil that some say could hinder its operation.
Challenges within the state conference are diverse and complex, according to correspondence, bank statements and an IRS move against the organization reviewed by The News & Observer:
— The IRS revoked the organization’s tax-exempt status this year, which could impede some of its usual fundraising in a pivotal election cycle, experts say.
— Organization bank statements reflect years of payments made to unidentifiable parties, with hundreds of thousands of dollars unaccounted for, according to the group’s current treasurer.
— The NC NAACP remains under a punitive “administratorship” its national organization launched in 2019.
— Factions within the organization’s membership are passionately at odds, with one group accusing the national organization of unjustly commandeering North Carolina’s NAACP.
It’s a state of affairs that many people closely involved with the organization refused to discuss for this article. It’s unsettling to outsiders who view the more than 80-year-old organization as a leading force for expanding civil rights in this state.
Just this month, the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of an NC NAACP lawsuit charging that Republican lawmakers who gerrymandered voting districts lacked authority to pass constitutional amendments in 2018. One amendment possibly in peril requires voters to bring photo IDs to the polls, a rule criticized for its potential to deter Black citizens from voting.
Former state Rep. Mickey Michaux, a Durham Democrat and longtime civil rights leader, told The N&O that the state conference has been pivotal in improving Black residents’ access to the polls.
“They’ve been a strong voice in getting things done the right way,” said Michaux, who partnered with the organization 15 years ago to pass legislation that included same-day voter registration.
Tax-exempt status stripped
The IRS disclosed this month that it revoked the NC NAACP’s tax-exempt status in May after the organization failed to file tax returns for three consecutive years.
The IRS also reports that it had revoked the tax-exempt status of many local NAACP branches across the state for the same reason. Those revocations occurred on the same day as the state conference’s, the IRS website shows.
News that the organizations have lost their tax-exempt status and evidence of their financial troubles are emerging at a time when the state conference has previously registered voters, organized get-out-the-vote campaigns and pushed back on any perceived voter suppression.
Losing that tax-exempt status means any income the state conference receives will be taxed; and the organization could be subject to fines for failing to file tax returns, according to Jack Cummings, a Raleigh tax attorney and former IRS associate chief counsel.
Potentially more serious, in a meeting this February of about 30 state and national NAACP leaders, NC NAACP treasurer Gerald Givens Jr. shared findings from an investigation he conducted into the North Carolina organization’s financial health and history.
His “strictly confidential” presentation, obtained by The N&O, detailed eight years of “very problematic” payment patterns, including “potential misappropriation of funds on multiple levels.” More than $1 million had been spent without proper authorization, Givens said at the meeting.
Givens, who is also president of the NAACP’s Raleigh-Apex branch, declined to comment for this article, but a transcript of his speech was shared with The N&O and independently verified.
Spearman vs. national NAACP
Much of the conflict gripping the NC NAACP involves criticism, including financial mismanagement allegations, directed at the late Rev. Anthony Spearman, who led the NC NAACP from 2017 to 2021.
Spearman died in July at his home in Greensboro. The Guilford County Sheriff’s Office has not released what caused his death. But an incident report says friends or family discovered his body and that two weapons were recovered at the scene.
Following his death, The N&O learned that the national NAACP had revoked Spearman’s membership in the organization in February.
Officials with the national organization accused Spearman of failing to transfer years worth of records and financial documents to his successor, current President Deborah Maxwell of Wilmington, the first woman to lead the NC conference, correspondence shows.
Maxwell did not respond to phone messages seeking comment.
Prior to pulling Spearman’s membership, the national NAACP’s board of directors had placed the NC conference under a punitive “administratorship” in 2019, meaning the national group would take “responsibility” for operation of the branch, its committees and staff.
Spearman was stripped of his operational responsibilities and instructed to submit bank statements, monthly financials, payroll information and other data from as far back as 2013.
Janette McCarthy Wallace, general counsel of the national organization, also declined to comment for this article, saying NAACP officials cannot speak about internal issues.
Spearman’s allies
Spearman has defenders. Most visible are people involved with Justice Coalition USA, which describes itself as a “coalition of NAACP members seeking redress of the issues that have disenfranchised local and state NAACP chapters.”
Spearman and supporters created the coalition prior to his death, according to the Rev. Cardes Brown of Greensboro.
Brown was the state conference’s religious affairs chairperson under Spearman and, before that, under the Rev. William Barber II, a nationally prominent civil rights and economic equity activist who led the NC NAACP from 2005 through 2016.
Among the letters posted on the alliance’s website is a December 2020 letter Spearman wrote to the national NAACP’s CEO accusing the organization of never adequately justifying why it took disciplinary action against the NC conference and of not taking steps to resolve any perceived problems.
“Before the Administratorship, our State Conference was looked upon as one of the most effective, distinguished and viable of Southern-based civil rights organizations since the great steps forward many of us participated in during the 1960s until the present times,” Spearman wrote to Derrick Johnson, the national NAACP CEO and president.
“The Administratorship has caused some to question the integrity of the State Conference, which our many partners depend upon. It has sown seeds of distrust and discord among our key financial supporters who have limited their giving as they struggle to understand the logic behind the Administratorship,” Spearman added.
Documents posted on the Justice Coalition website also claim that the national NAACP held an improper election in October 2021 that unseated Spearman. They contend that the national NAACP had no reason to take over the NC organization.
The national organization has dismissed both claims in correspondence to NC leaders.
The group also has claimed that Spearman’s ouster was retribution after the national organization complained that he and others with the state conference publicly supported an employee who claimed that a former staff director had sexually harassed her.
National NAACP steps in
When the national NAACP put the NC conference under administratorship in 2019, it appointed Gloria Sweet-Love, president of the Tennessee NAACP conference, and Hazel Dukes, president of the New York NAACP conference, as administrators of North Carolina’s NAACP, according to a letter from October of that year, obtained by The N&O.
Sweet-Love told The N&O this month that she couldn’t discuss the state conference’s finances because conference operations are being audited for the six years before Maxwell was elected last fall.
That would include Spearman’s four years as president and the final two years of Barber’s presidency. Barber, who established the high-profile Moral Monday campaign, rose in prominence while at the NAACP. He now leads Repairers of the Breach, a national organization he founded in 2015 that co-created the Poor People’s Campaign.
But in a 2021 letter to Spearman defending the national NAACP taking the reins in North Carolina, Sweet-Love wrote that unnamed NAACP members had filed several complaints against him and Barber that accused them of not following NAACP rules and policies. Barber also did not respond to The N&O’s multiple requests for comment.
Without specifying who the complaints were against, Sweet-Love listed allegations that requests for independent audits of the NC conference’s finances were ignored, that spending occurred without executive committee approval and that financial reports were not filed for all money collected at rallies and events. The last item was this: “The North Carolina State Conference has and continues to operate in a manner that ignores the sovereignty of the National Office.”
In July, Mark Cummings, a Spearman lawyer, disputed all allegations that Spearman, a former president of the North Carolina Council of Churches, had done anything wrong. Brown, the Justice Coalition member, said Barber insisted on financial accountability, including annual audits.
Brown said coalition members welcome a forensic audit of the state conference’s books. “We are very confident that there is nothing that can be found,” said Brown.
But since at least 2014, some NC NAACP leaders have been critical of the North Carolina conference’s bookkeeping, according to letters obtained by The N&O.
Carolyn McDougal, whom The N&O could not reach for comment, was second vice president of the NC NAACP in 2019 when she wrote to national headquarters voicing concerns over the organization’s financial state — and whether the state chapter could even function.
“Since 2014, I have personally requested an audit be performed on the NC NAACP Sate (sic) Conference finances,” McDougal wrote in a letter obtained by The N&O. “This request has been denied and/or ignored... Currently, we do not know the status of the NC NAACP finances. We do not know how much money we have, if any at all.”
Irregularities in the organization’s bank statements included frequent money transfers that violated NAACP policies and payments to unauthorized people, according to Givens’ February presentation of his internal audit. His report didn’t identify who received the money.
Bank statements showed the organization’s general fund had fallen below zero dollars more than once, according to the treasurer’s confidential report. In July 2016, for example, the fund had a month-end deficit of about $1,610.
Public image vs. internal battles
Spearman’s public persona didn’t always focus on his organization’s internal struggles. As the national NAACP accelerated its ultimatums in 2021, he was leveraging his position as president to protest social injustice.
For more than a week in September, Spearman staged a round-the-clock sit-in before the Executive Mansion in downtown Raleigh. As an NAACP ambassador, he demanded Gov. Roy Cooper pardon Dontae Sharpe, a Black man who had been wrongly imprisoned for 26 years.
Sharpe was released in 2019. But without a governor’s pardon, which allows recipients to seek compensation of $50,000 for each year served in prison, he struggled with poverty. Cooper pardoned Sharpe two months later.
A month after Spearman’s sit-in, he lost his reelection bid to Maxwell and then unsuccessfully contested the election results. Wallace, the national NAACP’s counsel, later claimed in a letter that Al McSurely, also Spearman’s lawyer, “falsely asserted” that the national office failed to investigate his election complaint.
When informing Spearman that his membership was suspended in February, Johnson, the NAACP president and CEO, sent a letter scolding him for “deliberately” refusing to return state conference property.
“Your continued recalcitrant conduct will cause irreparable harm to the Association and the State Conference,” Johnson wrote.
In June, Spearman filed a lawsuit against Johnson, Leon Russell — chair of the NAACP’s national board of directors — Sweet-Love, and several members of the NAACP’s North Carolina leadership, including Maxwell and Givens, the treasurer.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of defamation and civil conspiracy to remove him.
Getting going again?
Sweet-Love, the Tennessee conference leader, said in brief phone interviews, the latest on Monday, that the North Carolina conference and national leaders are working to restore the NC organization’s tax-exempt status.
“As we speak, that is being corrected,” she said earlier this month.
She added that the IRS revocation won’t prevent the state conference from making a strong advocacy push during the 2022 election season.
“Some things are the bread and butter of the NAACP and voting rights and getting out the vote are very much a part of that,” she said. “President Maxwell and her team will be very much at the forefront.”
Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political science professor, said the NAACP’s administrative woes might be discouraging to those who have come to trust the organization.
“Clearly that’s a bad message to send to its donors, its supporters and North Carolinians in general,” said Cooper, who leads the university’s public policy institute.
Jack Cummings, the Raleigh tax attorney, said the North Carolina conference should be able to get straight with the IRS by reaching out and catching up on its tax returns.
“This can be fixed if someone wants to do it,” he said.
But an IRS revocation is not something donors would like to see, he added.
“It’s a pretty bad knock on what you would have thought was a premier organization,” he said.
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(News & Observer reporter Aaron Sánchez-Guerra contributed to this story.)
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