A group of prominent blacks within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called Friday for the group's chairman, William Gibson, to resign, asserting that he had diverted the organization's money to his own use and that he had driven the organization to the brink of bankruptcy as a result of free-spending habits.
"We cannot let our beloved association die an ignominious death because William F. Gibson thinks he is more important than the NAACP," said C. DeLores Tucker, a member of the board of the organization's tax-exempt fund-raising arm.Telephone calls to Gibson's home and office in South Carolina were not answered Friday.
Tucker made her statements at a news conference held by a group calling itself the "NAACP - SOS Committee." Members of the group say it was formed to press for change in the civil rights organization.
Other members of the committee include Clifford Alexander, former secretary of the Army; Julian Bond, a former NAACP board member and Georgia legislator; Judge Robert Carter, a federal judge in New York; Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women; and Percy Sutton, former Manhattan borough president and chairman of Inner City Broadcasting Corp., which owns radio stations with large black audiences in New York City, including WLIB.
"None of us wants to stand here and air the dirty linen of an ancient, beloved and respected organization in the public," Bond said. "If there were any way that these problems could be made to go away through our silence, then none of us would be here."
The demand that Gibson step down is evidence that the 85-year-old organization has not moved away from the turmoil and allegations of mismanagement that have hit it.