MD-07: While former Democratic Rep. Kweisi Mfume has long insisted that he voluntarily resigned as president of the NAACP in 2004, a new article in the Baltimore Sun confirms reports from 2005 that said Mfume had in fact been let go by the organization's board.
According to a document prepared by Julian Bond, who at the time was chair of the NAACP's board, the decision not to renew Mfume's contract "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 last part may be a reference to an NAACP employee who accused Mfume of sexual harassment and threatened to sue.
Mfume has also maintained that the board never informed him of its displeasure, but Bond's papers (which are maintained in a public archive at the University of Virginia, where he taught before his death in 2015) record that members of the board's executive committee met with Mfume "face-to-face" to tell him of their decision. Mfume would not speak with the Sun about Bond's documents and instead released a statement saying, "Sometimes strong-willed leaders have differences of opinion. Julian and I were no different."
Questions about Mfume's tenure at the NAACP did not arise during his unsuccessful 2006 bid for Senate, and his opponents in the Feb. 4 primary for the April 28 special election haven't raised the topic either. However, at the first and only debate of the race on Monday night, a moderator asked Mfume, "How can we trust you not to take advantage of your position?" Mfume acknowledged that a relationship he had with a subordinate at the NAACP was a mistake but did not discuss the sexual harassment allegations.