NC NAACP tumult continues: Latest disciplinary move by national office draws fire

More conflicts have flared between the national and North Carolina NAACP organizations, this time with new state leaders sanctioned.

The national NAACP has suspended two state conference officials who were leading efforts to address financial issues at the North Carolina State NAACP conference that have welled up over several years.

The national NAACP has given no details publicly as to why the state secretary and treasurer were suspended.

But Sylvia Barnes, the state secretary, said that she and state treasurer Gerald Givens Jr. were unfairly punished after refusing to pay a new state executive director’s unapproved expenses.

Givens declined to comment about the suspension. But at a news conference this week about gun violence in Wake County, Givens identified himself as the former president of the NAACP’s Raleigh-Apex chapter.

The County News, which covers Mecklenburg and nearby counties, last week published an article by North Carolina journalist Cash Michaels detailing turmoil within the state conference.

It focused on the suspensions, spending by the new executive director Da’Quan Love and other conflicts. It was republished by the Moore County NAACP branch.

Complicated conflicts

The state conference’s turbulent times date back several years. In 2019, the national NAACP cited financial concerns when placing the state conference in “administratorship,” which turned oversight over to an out-of-state official. That job went to Gloria Sweet-Love, president of the Tennessee NAACP state conference.

In 2021, in a controversial online election, former state conference president Rev. Anthony Spearman was defeated by Deborah Dicks Maxwell of New Hanover County. Spearman died by suicide last year.

Givens, who was elected treasurer of the state conference, took on the role of digging into the NC conference’s finances under Spearman and his predecessor.

Last September, the News & Observer reported on an internal NAACP presentation where Givens identified eight years of “very problematic” spending patterns. More than $1 million in spending lacked proper authorization, he said at the meeting.

Barnes said in an interview with the N&O that she and Givens raised similar concerns after Sweet-Love gave Da’Quan Love the contract to serve as the NC conference’s executive director. She paid him $5,000 a month, more than any prior executive director had been paid, Barnes said.

“It is a disgrace,” Barnes said in a video interview Michaels posted this week.

Da’Quan Love began billing the NC conference for travel expenses before getting approval from its executive board, Barnes said.

She said she told Love that the national NAACP “made it very clear that we are not supposed to expend any money from the state conference until it is approved by the state conference executive committee.”

Michaels’ reporting includes quotes from email correspondence by Charlotte-Mecklenburg County NAACP president Corine Mack that criticized Love’s handling of the annual state convention in Fayetteville on Oct. 15.

“We spent $60,000 for a one-day state convention of which $30,000 was reimbursed to Mr. Love,” she wrote, later adding that there were less than 100 attendees. Mack declined to comment when reached by an N&O reporter this week.

Love and Maxwell referred all questions to the national NAACP office. The N&O reached out to the national office on Tuesday and so far has not received a response. Sweet-Love could not be reached.

NAACP less effective?

Michaels said in his report that several unnamed former and current state NAACP officials told him the state conference has had little involvement on major issues affecting the state.

They saw little effort, for example, in voter turnout for the November election, despite a prominent Black Democrat, former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, running against Republican U.S. Rep. Tedd Budd for a U.S. Senate seat, Michaels reported.

Beasley and all other statewide Democratic candidates lost. Some turnout data showed a dip in Black voting.

Barnes, the former president of the Goldsboro-Wayne NAACP branch, said in the video Cash posted that she will continue to work on civil rights issues regardless of her status with the NAACP.

“We have so much that we can offer to people – red, yellow, Black and white – we are all precious in God’s sight and that’s what I want to build on whether I’m working for the NAACP or whether I am out here in voter registration, standing firm on what civil rights means and helping other people,” she said. “That’s what I will do until God calls me home.”