Interview with Kweisi Mfume

Q: Why would a five term congressman in a very safe seat decide to step down and take on the NAACP, an organization with serious and complex problems?

A: Because life is not about safety, it's about what you do while you have an opportunity to make a difference. I was able to spend 10 years in Congress, develop a number of skills and a number of contacts. And for me, it's a matter of coming full circle back to the place I started, to take those skills and those contacts and that sensibility that I got to try to build and create coalitions and movements and really beliefs, and give it back to the community that birthed me. I could have stayed in Congress, been a lifer, but it's one vote on any given day on any given issue. This allows me the opportunity now to work with an organization in its re-creation period, to make it so that it is never dependent on any one corporation, on any one individual again, and to restructure its infrastructure in such a way that people of color throughout this nation recognize that it's alright now to come back home.

Q: Any specifics on accomplishing that--your specific vision for the NAACP?

A: Well, the first thing is to get the financial apparatus working in such a way so that there is absolute and total accountability. I want people to know around this country that whatever took place in the past will end. Change will come, it will be immediate, it will be clear and it will be constructive. Secondly, that the theme of economic empowerment has to be ore than just a theme. It's a logical extension of the civil rights movement. We've got to give new meaning to that. We have to understand that coalitions in this country are more than just black and white, that coalitions also within the black community among different groups and different organizations. We've got to find a way to build on strength. And I want to try to communicate a clear message to young people that the principles that many of us were raised on, this thing about individual responsibility, educational excellence and a reason to give back to the community are really the foundation blocks that they have to build on first as they develop themselves, and then try later to give to the society. I want to talk about the political power of the NAACP and what it will be in the future. I expect to organize in every congressional district around this country groups of people that will make a difference in marginal races, so that we'll be able to fight the ultra-right conservatism that we see as being imposed on people. I cannot sit on Congress with a safe seat and watch that, and rant and rave on the floor of the House when an opportunity like this has presented itself that now will allow me to actively engage people in every one of these congressional districts with an equal and opposite response to what they are doing against our best interests.

Q: You talked about reforming the infrastructure, but how are you going to do that when there's still the power of this unwieldy board? What do you do about that?

A: Well, first thing you have to do is to recognize that it doesn't make a lot of sense numerically or otherwise to have a 50-member staff and a 64-member board. It says something is wrong right there. Actually it was because of staff reductions. I said to the board when I decided that I would in fact accept the offer that if the board was not prepared to a) reform itself and b) go along with the reforms that may be imposed on it and c) understand that there is no other choice, then I don't need this job. I can go back to doing what I'm doing. And I told them that's the only way that I would move into this post. Merrilee Evers Williams, to her credit, has worked hard at this. I see myself as someone helping her in the process of this reform of the board.

Q: And the board accepted that?

A: The board accepted that. They recognize, quite frankly, where we are: that this is a crossroads and you either go down the path less traveled, which is often the one less certain, or you stand where you are, and you often get swallowed up by the changes in the course of time.

Q: One of the often heard criticisms of the NAACP is that it's been out of touch for many years with the masses of the African-American community. I don't want to debate that question, but I would like to hear from you what you think they mean when they say that?

A: What they mean is that they want to believe that any organization, particularly their oldest and their once most proud organization, is going to be actively involved in issues, not running away from controversial leaders, not running away from controversial themes, and certainly not running away from people who are in the streets of this country. They want to know that the fight of the NAACP really has moved from boardrooms and litigation, it is also a fight that ought to be in school rooms and on courtyards and on street corners, where the people are who need help. And they want to believe that they have an organization that is uncompromising in its principles. If you don't have the principle of your absolute and total belief, it's hard to bring anybody along in terms of having a vision because you then appear visionless. People want that, they expect it, and quite frankly, I think that African-Americans in particular and America in general deserves that.

Q: Something about your decision to leave Congress sounds like a repudiation of the electoral process as it works for the black community. You and Bill Gray [former House Budget Committee chairman who left for the United Negro College Fund] are among several who decided to give it up. What are we to make of that about the institution of Congress?

A: I believe in the institution of Congress. I believe in the electoral process. I spent 16 years in elected office. But I think we cannot see that as the beginning and ending of our struggle, and that we ought to be judged with the same yardstick that white members of Congress are judged when they decide to leave and go to work for a foundation, or go back to their respective religious group or community and give. It is a process that has always occurred, at least among those who realize that once you are given something that you have a burden to do something with it and that the electoral process, and certainly the seat that I held, was not mine. It belonged to the people who sent me there. And I'm convinced that if we trust people, they will always find good replacements, but if we don't trust people, they will always question our real commitment to change. So it's not a repudiation of the system, it's rather an embracing of the community that first nurtured me.

Q: One question about yourself. You've come out of a tough neighborhood, shown a lot of personal drive, and I was wondering how much do you think the problems of Black America are a result of the personal responsibility question as opposed to needing a helping hand from an institution?

A: I think that the problems find their genesis in a number of areas. One of the cures, I think, is personal responsibility, which is why it was one of the first things that I suggested. We've got to find a way to say to children while they're young and in their formative years, and later, when they're adolescents, that it's alright, that you're supposed to have a sense of personal responsibility. But at the same time, we've got to recognize that the genesis of some of those problems also came from a system of neglect, of institutionalized racism, of an unwillingness to do what was right in this country. In 1909, when a group of people got together in a New York apartment to form what later became known as the NAACP, Charles Kellogg in his book which chronologizes that period, remarked about the fact that it was absolutely clear in this society that with court decisions following Reconstruction, with a move by the intellectual press to put down the Negro, as it were, with all sorts of decisions to reinterpret the 14th and 15th Amendments, that the rights of Black people would never see the light of day. So now we find ourselves in the last decade of the last century, where court decisions by a wickedly mean Supreme Court, where interpretations of Constitutional law by Congress and others and where the intellectuals of the so-called white press are still putting us in a place where we have inconsequential meaning. That can't continue, and that is why, for me, it was not a matter of walking away from a safe seat, it was a matter of walking back to a community and to a group of people who have nurtured me, with the sense that we can move forward, and coalition with new vision and not be afraid of tomorrow.

Q: Your predecessor Ben Chavis attempted to broaden the reach of the NAACP, and he was criticized. He embraced Minister Farrakhan, he also embraced gangs, gangster rappers, will you attempt to do the same as part of your strategy?

A: I don't criticize the efforts of Mr. Chavis to reach out. If you're not reaching out then you're standing still, and you can't expect people to move towards you. I think that the manner in which some of it was done perhaps created more of a problem than he needed. I'm a person that by nature believes that you've got find ways to reach out and embrace other concepts, and other people to create at least a willingness to try. If it fails then so be it, you find something else to do. But these efforts towards youth in particular are something that we can't lose sight of. Young people need to feel that people want to hear what they have to say, and they do have something to say. And they have to feel also that they have a role in the making of policy, in the making of society. That's going to continue under me, the effort to reach out to groups in our society no matter who they are or where they may be, if in fact they are prepared to embrace the concepts of the NAACP is something that I'm going to do. But the first order of business is to straighten out the NAACP and that will come swiftly. And that will be measured not by words, but by deeds.

Q: But some of the money began to dry up once the NAACP began to align itself with Minister Farrakhan because of some of his views.

A: That may be true, and that's why I began my remarks by saying never again will this organization be dependent on a corporation, or for that matter corporate America, to determine whether or not it's going to have fiscal solvency. Its greatest amount of money comes from its membership. Its membership is overwhelmingly African-American. But its membership expects also the right kind of an accounting, and that will take place from this point on.