W/Pic

Mfume Admits Having A Personal Relationship With An NAACP StafferBy Makebra AndersonNNPA WASHINGTON (NNPA) – When the NAACP’s Board of Directors declined to renew the contract of President and CEO Kweisi Mfume last fall, some speculated that it was because of the internal conflicts between Mfume and Board Chairman Julian Bond. However, published reports have now disclosed that there were also concerns over Mfume’s personal relationship with one female staff member, possibly more. “I don’t think this has anything to do with personality conflicts. What people have been talking about is why Mfume left and in that context they were talking about the problems with Bond, but as it turns out, that might not have been the issue at all. This may have been the issue,” said University of Maryland professor Ron Walters. It was recently disclosed that last summer, a female employee of the NAACP, Michele Speaks, accused Mfume of unfair treatment. The NAACP’s executive committee requested that an outside lawyer review her allegations and assess the organization’s liability. One month after the lawyer presented the memo to the committee, Mfume resigned. Mfume states that his resignation had nothing to do with Speaks’ charges. “My contract was up there [at the NAACP] on October 24. It was really time for me to move on and do something else,” he said on the National Public Radio program, “News & Notes with Ed Gordon.” He explained, “What that something else was, as I said at my press conference, could have been business, it could have involved politics, it could involve writing or it could have involved spending more time with my youngest son, but it was time for me to move on. I’m the kind of person that is motivated by challenge and I needed a new challenge.” According to the Washington Post, which broke the story, the memo stated, “The impression [was] created that a woman must provide sexual favors to Mr. Mfume or his associates in order to receive favorable treatment in the workplace.” In the NPR interview, Mfume told Ed Gordon, “These are all unproven and unsubstantiated accusations. That’s the interesting thing about all of this, and why someone would take that information to the Washington Post in the middle of the night and leave it in the very early stages of this campaign is very interesting and I can’t really react to that. I believe however that it’s clearly an effort to kill the campaign, to discredit me, to dry up donations and to put questions in the mind of potential voters here in Maryland and that’s unfortunate.” Mfume, who is unmarried, served as president and CEO of the NAACP for nine years. He acknowledges that he dated one female employee of the NAACP. He says he adopted that woman’s young son. “I did date someone there for about three months back in 1997, although nothing came of that. It was a very short series of lunches and dinners. I fell in love with her son who was fatherless, very withdrawn, four years of age and just the kind of child that for me, as a member of Big Brothers/Big Sisters for the last 25 years, it was the right thing to do,” he said on the broadcast. This is not the first time an NAACP executive has come under fire for having personal relationships with female employees. Former Executive Director, Ben Chavis, who was replaced by Mfume, left the organization tarnished and several million dollars in debt after the NAACP made a secret $350,000 settlement with a female staffer. Chavis, who was married, was sued by the woman and that led to the out-of-court settlement. “I am a little bit surprised that the organization did not lay down some rules of etiquette after the Ben Chavis affair,” says Walters, the political science professor. “From my understanding, once something like that happens, it is the board’s responsibility to delegate a set of rules or procedures that establishes the way the office ought to be managed. They didn’t do that apparently. The person coming in should know what the boards expectations are in terms of dating personnel. Some of this really is on the NAACP.” Attempts to reach Board Chairman, Julian Bond were unsuccessful. Mfume says he is confident that this will not hurt his run for the U.S. Senate. “People here in Maryland will make decisions based on facts and what they believe and you can look someone in the eye and tell when they’re lying to you and when they’re telling the truth and it will be interesting to see what happens as we go through this campaign,” he said. Walters isn’t convinced the matter will go away. “If these charges are credible, I think it’s going to damage his campaign because we’re in an environment where the whole question of morality is linked to politics and I wouldn’t for example, put it past Republicans to comment on this from that standpoint to try to damage whoever the Democratic nominee is going to be. “[Mfume] is going to have to put this to rest in order to satisfy the public. He’s gong to have to do more than just say it didn’t’ happen. He’s gong to have to prove it to somebody. Again, you talk about credibility of the document/charges. He’s gong to have to dismiss these charges in some credible way.” Mfume says there are limitations on how he can react. “I can’t stop people from making unproven allegations, but I can state the facts. The fact is, I really believe in and have all my life worked for the hiring and promotion of qualified women as a goal organizations and business should take serious and my record reflects that. I believe that too many women in this society are prejudged everyday by the assumption that they only got where they were because of their body and not their brain. And that kind of thinking is an insult to all women, but as a man, I can tell you that it’s despicable,” he told Gordon. He added, “As I’ve said all along, that’s not the kind of ship I run and most people that know me, know that’s not the case. If I was doing all this after 10 years at the NAACP, 10 years in Congress and seven years in the city council, it’s interesting that this would only come about now as an accusation while I’m running for the United States Senate in Maryland.”