“We believe as an organization, we need to retool to become better
advocates, better at educating the pubic, better at involving them,”
Derrick Johnson, vice chairman of the NAACP board of directors, said in
a conference call announcing the change.
Johnson said the group would embark on a national “listening tour”
as part of its re-branding. That kind of tour, which is a common strategy
among politicians as they seek to gain public support, has never been
done in the NAACP’s 108-year history, Johnson said.
"These changing times require us to be vigilant and agile, but we
have never been more committed or ready for the challenges ahead,”
NAACP board chairman Leon W. Russell said in a statement. “We know
that our hundreds of thousands of members and supporters expect a strong
and resilient NAACP moving forward, as our organization has been in the
past, and it remains our mission to ensure the advancement of communities
of color in this country,"
Johnson said current president and CEO, Cornell W. Brooks, will end his
position after nearly three years. Brooks will serve out his term in the
Baltimore-based organization until his contract expires on June 30.
Russell and Johnson will run the organization during the search for a successor.
They said there was no firm deadline to install new leadership. On the
call with reporters, they declined to explain why they needed to remove Brooks.
“We are not looking to correct something that is wrong, we are looking
to improve,” Russell said.
Brooks told American Urban Radio Networks on Friday that he was surprised
by the decision and said he disagreed with it.
“The stated reason is that they are reimagining the NAACP. Beyond
that, I can’t point to any substantive reason,” he said. “What
I can point to this: The NAACP over the course of the less than three
years [he has been president] is more visible, more vocal, growing in
members, donors, presence in the courts and in communities across the
country.”
Brooks is known as a soft-spoken attorney with a history of working in
civil rights organizations. Before the NAACP, he was president of the
New Jersey Institute for Social Justice and executive director of the
Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington.
His tenure at the NAACP included several court wins against state voting
restrictions that group said discriminated against minorities. The group
also filed a lawsuit against Michigan state officials over the water crisis in Flint.
More recently, Brooks was arrested during a sit-in this year at Mobile,
Ala., office of then-Sen.
Jeff Sessions as he protested Sessions’ civil rights record ahead of his confirmation
as attorney general. Among some NAACP members, the move was praised as
a new turn for an organization better known for less aggressive tactics.
But it was also criticized by others.
Some civil rights leaders said Friday they praised Brooks’ civil
rights record and the group’s attempt to revamp itself.
“Cornell Brooks has been a strong partner in the racial justice movement
and a great colleague. I’ve been proud to stand with him to resist
and combat injustice,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers
Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Nekima Levy-Pounds, the former president of the Minneapolis chapter of
the NAACP, said she was surprised by Brooks’ ouster but was pleased
to see the group pushing itself to adapt.
“I would like to see the NAACP be more nimble when it comes to civil
rights challenges,” said Levy-Pounds, an attorney and leader in
the Black Lives Matter movement, who is now campaigning for mayor of Minneapolis.
“It was a challenge to be both an NAACP president and somebody who
was engaged in the streets.”
Randolph M. McLaughlin, a law professor at Pace University who has studied
civil rights movements, said he hoped the organization — founded
in 1909 when Jim Crow was still rampant throughout the South — would thrive.
“It is critical that the NAACP has the most dynamic and creative
activist leadership during the Trump era,” said McLaughlin. “The
threats to civil rights and civil liberties demand no less from the oldest
civil rights organization in the United States.”
jaweed.kaleem@latimes.com
