Kweisi Mfume, who is running for Congress in part on his accomplishments as leader of the NAACP, had a more tumultuous tenure at the civil rights organization than previously known — leaving after several negative performance reviews and a vote by the executive committee not to grant him a new contract, according to records reviewed by The Baltimore Sun.
The secret 2004 vote that ended Mfume’s nine-year run as president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People came shortly after an employee threatened to sue the organization and Mfume for sexual harassment, but also amid other concerns about Mfume’s management, the records show.
“The Executive Committee’s overwhelming vote was not lightly taken,” then-NAACP Chairman Julian Bond wrote as he prepared to share the decision with the full board. “It came after a long period of growing dissatisfaction with high and constant staff turnovers, falling revenues, falling memberships, three consecutive negative performance appraisals, highly questionable hiring and promotion decisions, creation of new staff positions with no job descriptions, and personal behavior which placed each of us at legal and financial risk.”
The document is among Bond’s personal and professional papers at the University of Virginia. Bond, a longtime civil rights leader who died in 2015, was chairman of the Baltimore-based NAACP from 1998 to 2010. He taught at the university.
There are hundreds of pages specific to Mfume’s NAACP leadership in the records, including employment contracts and a separation agreement; performance evaluations; emails between board members and NAACP counsel; and a report on earlier allegations of mismanagement and nepotism by Mfume, written by two attorneys as part of a 1999 inquiry.
The records hold fresh relevance given Mfume’s campaign to again represent Maryland’s 7th District in Congress. Mfume, a Democrat, held the office from 1987 until he resigned in 1996 to take over the NAACP. The seat became vacant in October upon the death of Mfume’s successor, Democrat Elijah Cummings.
A special primary will be held Feb. 4. The Democratic primary is likely to determine the representative to fill the remainder of Cummings’ term, given the party’s 4-1 advantage among registered voters in the district.
Mfume declined an interview with The Sun about the Bond records. He said in a statement: “Sometimes strong-willed leaders have differences of opinion. Julian and I were no different.” He said he took the organization from debt to a surplus, and received a raise in his final three-year contract in 2001.
“The people in the community know me, and I know them,” Mfume said. “They know what I am fighting for in this campaign and what I will fight for in Congress.”
At Mfume’s campaign announcement Nov. 4, University of Maryland law professor Larry Gibson told supporters he had “saved the national NAACP.” Mfume’s website describes his tenure there as part of a “long resume of public service.”
Aba Blankson, an NAACP spokeswoman, said in a statement that the organization “cannot comment on individual matters involving personnel,” but “takes any and all allegations of sexual harassment seriously” and “strongly condemns such behavior whenever and wherever it occurs.” Dennis Hayes, who was general counsel for the NAACP at the time and took over as acting president when Mfume left, also said he couldn’t talk about what happened because what he knows “falls under attorney-client privilege.”
For years, Mfume, 71, and other NAACP leaders have maintained that he left amicably and of his own accord, and his tenure at the civil rights organization has remained a high mark of his career. When Mfume took over in 1996, the NAACP was floundering and $3.2 million in debt. When he left in 2004, he was hailed as something of a savior.
“Kweisi Mfume came to the NAACP when we were nearly bankrupt and our reputation under siege; he left sure re-election to Congress to help save the NAACP,” Bond said when Mfume left. “He has been one of the most effective spokespersons for justice and fair play.”
Mfume said it had been his honor “to help revive and restore the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.” Of his surprise departure, Mfume said: “This is not about some internal squabble.”
Critics questioned whether the resignation was tied to board concerns about his management, especially after the sexual harassment allegation was revealed. A former manager had alleged just months earlier that she rebuffed an advance by Mfume, then was passed over for raises and a promotion. The NAACP paid her about $100,000 to avoid a lawsuit.
Separately, in 1999, lawyers for the organization had conducted the inquiry into allegations that Mfume gave preferential treatment to an employee he was dating. Mfume has previously acknowledged dating her, which he has called a “boneheaded” thing to do. He has denied any wrongdoing or harassment.
Mfume sought to return to public office in 2005 with a run for an open U.S. Senate seat. An NAACP board member who requested anonymity for fear of alienating colleagues told The Sun then that the executive committee gave Mfume a vote of no confidence before his 2004 departure.
Asked about the vote at the time, Mfume said he knew nothing about it. “Oh, no. If they did, they didn’t give it to me,” he said. He dismissed what he called “unproven and unsubstantiated allegations levied against me by some person or people trying to disrupt my campaign.”
But Bond said in his papers that after the vote, a select group of executive committee members met Mfume “face-to-face” and “informed him of our decision.”
The records show the characterization of the break as amicable was a calculated move by both parties, despite the board voting to get rid of Mfume.
In a document Bond prepared for an executive committee discussion before the vote, he noted that months of work by members tasked with considering a new contract for Mfume had been interrupted by the harassment allegation and lawsuit threat. He wrote that many board members told him “their confidence in the CEO had been seriously challenged and their faith in him has been diminished.”
Four days later, Mfume signed the separation agreement, which said Mfume “after much personal reflection decided to amicably sever his working relationship with the NAACP.”
Five days after that, Bond informed the full board of Mfume’s pending departure. According to his draft remarks for that call, Bond said the 15 executive committee members who were present for the previous week’s meeting voted to end Mfume’s employment. He said the committee agreed to offer Mfume a severance package that included an “agreement guaranteeing that the separation and announcement would be a win/win situation for both CEO Mfume and the NAACP.”
Beyond the harassment claims, the records show other concerns about Mfume’s leadership. In a 1999 performance appraisal, Mfume scored highly for fundraising, managing finances, and knowledge of civil rights issues and the organization’s programs. But board members said they felt “out of the loop” — “as though the vision is his vision, not that of the organization,” the review said.
They “want to see improvements in his management performance, specifically in the hiring and retaining a capable staff, delegating authority, and working with the board to develop agreements about organizational direction and strategies.”
Mfume responded with a letter, saying: “I have an aggressive no nonsense approach when it comes to managing that does not always allow itself to first checking with the board before a decision is made.”
That same year, the lawyers investigating the allegation Mfume had given preferential treatment to a subordinate he was dating wrote that he refused to cooperate, and questioned whether he and his attorneys exerted “improper influence on two key witnesses.”
In 2001, Mfume signed his last contract. It came after Bond and other board members questioned Mfume’s request for a raise, given his refusal to tell them how much he earned from speeches. The contract included a raise, but capped the number of paid speeches Mfume could make at 12 a year.
In 2002, a dispute over office space for board members at NAACP headquarters between Mfume and then-NAACP Vice Chair Roslyn Brock reached a boiling point, after Mfume sent a sharply worded email to the executive committee.
“You seem to think about the NAACP as a Congressman thinks about his office — a vehicle which serves largely for re-election,” Bond responded. “The NAACP is not a vehicle for personal advancement or aggrandizement — it is instead a collective of thousands of persons, each of them committed to civil rights, none of them more important than the other, all of them dedicated to the good of the organization.”
In his performance review that year, the last included in Bond’s papers, board members again said Mfume was knowledgeable about the organization’s programs and its fiscal management. But they had concerns about his management of staff and his communication with other leaders.
Of the executive committee members, the review reported, “half of them register lack of satisfaction with his knowledge of how to maintain an effective office environment … and more than half raise questions about his having implemented appropriate personnel systems.”
Mfume, the report found, was “quite satisfied” with his performance.
Baltimore Sun research librarian Paul McCardell contributed to this article.
