Not just a black thing

After years of infighting and money woes, the local NAACP makes a comeback--and branches out

By Andrew Kiraly

Brooms, buckets and dropcloths mark the path to the Las Vegas NAACP office. Masking tape, stacks of tile and naked drywall too. The whole complex smells like paint; music and the chatter of laborers echoes throughout. They're refurbishing the office park on Desert Inn and Topaz where the NAACP makes its home, and rarely was a metaphor more fitting: The NAACP is undergoing a revamp too. New supporters are filling the rolls, new board members are coming on, new strategies are being hatched to address new issues.

Sadly, discrimination and racism are as old as the nation. But the Las Vegas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is set to tackle them with a new vigor.

"If you discriminate against the least of us, you do it to the most of us," says NAACP President Dean Ishman. "I personally don't see discrimination as a black-owned, black-only problem. The solution isn't going to be, either. We need everybody coming aboard and agreeing, and saying, 'This is wrong,' no matter who it's levied against, period."

If that sounds like the optimism of a newbie, that's because Ishman is one. The 10-year resident of Las Vegas has been president of the Las Vegas branch of the NAACP for 1 1/2 years. The branch itself has been operational for almost three years under its reinstated charter. But that freshness of spirit might be just the thing to reinvigorate the troubled organization, which was essentially quashed in 2001 by its national overseers. The national NAACP was responding to a host of problems that had turned the local outlet of the civil rights group into a thoroughly uncivil place, rife with infighting, dirty politics, financial problems and garden-variety incompetence.

Indeed, the fact that Ishman, no matter how hard he tried, couldn't become a member of the Las Vegas branch was what inspired him to get involved.

"I'd sent in a couple of checks to try to get my membership established," Ishman says, "and in each case my checks seemed to have gotten lost and I was never able to become a member. In doing a little research about it, I had been warned about a lot of infighting and things that were going on with the board at that time. I thought, maybe this is a message from God that this is not the right time. I went into a wait-and-see mode and, lo and behold, there came the incident that got the charter revoked [in 2001]."

Through a chain of events, Ishman--a 49-year-old retired transit police officer from New York, ladder-tall at 6 feet 5 inches and with a certain shrugging boyishness about him--was catapulted to president.

"Dean Ishman is incredibly motivating, besides being tireless," says Peggy Maze Johnson, NAACP chair of press and publicity. "He is committed to making this a model branch."

Thus a reborn NAACP pulls up its sleeves for a new millennium of civil rights struggle. But how effective will it be? Supporters say the bad times are behind it; but critics say the new organization is already showing signs of shakiness. At best, they say, it's picking the wrong battles. At worst, it's proving to be too friendly and accommodationist with the power structure of Southern Nevada.

But to understand where the Las Vegas branch of the NAACP is going, it's essential to know where it's been.

Civil rights and wrongs

For all its power as a force for progress, inspiration and change, the national NAACP can be a bunch of hard-asses.

The organization revealed that side in 2001 when it yanked the charter of the Las Vegas branch. It wasn't a rash decision; it came after a period of several years during which the local branch had succumbed to power struggles, money woes and bureaucratic headaches.

The troubles in its recent history began as early as 1997, when it was evicted from its offices because the chapter was $5,000 behind in utility bills. In August 1998, national HQ suspended the leaders of the branch for not submitting year-end financial reports for 1996. (Which isn't to say national was a bunch of angels; the mid-'90s marked a period of spiraling debt and financial malfeasance for the civil rights institution). Local leaders decried the suspension, but a new round of elections in January 1999 didn't solve the problem; bickering over results and accusations of unethical behavior once again drew the ire of HQ.

The next couple of years would spark a much-storied, antagonistic relationship between then-chapter president Gene Collins and the national organization. As Collins would go on to confront the organization's most relevant local challenge--diversity in the gaming industry--national headquarters would come down harder and harder. Collins criticized the gaming industry for its lack of spending on black-owned businesses, and several properties took notice. By the spring of 2000, MGM Mirage had publicly committed to hire more minority contractors and patronize more minority vendors; Station Casinos heads met with Collins in January 2001 and ironed out an agreement for the locals casino giant to recruit more minority managers.

"I won't say everything was at 100 percent," recalls Collins, now state chair of National Action Network, another civil rights organization. "But I forged a relationship with [MGM Mirage chairman and chief executive] Terry Lanni, and that relationship panned out tremendously. Our concern was to change the dynamic of how it was as opposed to how it is [in the gaming industry]. We got the door open."

Perhaps too open. For reasons that still baffle many members today, the national NAACP suspended the branch's charter in 2001, freezing its bank account and stripping officers of their duties, leaving the 1,000 members of the local branch in limbo. The national NAACP was never clear about the reasons for the suspension, but Collins suspected it had to do with his pressure on the gaming industry, particularly his demands that MGM Mirage bankroll a $100 million West Las Vegas community investment program. At the time, Collins opined that national NAACP honchos were afraid of losing their casino perks. Officials at national headquarters in Baltimore did not return phone calls for this story, but press accounts suggest they were miffed at a local branch undertaking a major diversity push without a nod from above.

Collins says he bears no ill will about the breakup. "I don't have anything bad to say about the NAACP, and I have nothing but respect for the [local] president," he says. But he does admit it's nice not to have a national organization constantly peering over your shoulder. "The difference between [the NAACP and NAN] is we cut out a lot of the red tape over here," he says. "We don't have a regional director, don't have to get approval from national. All we have to do is inform them of what is going on out here, but we have the right to intervene on any level. I don't have all those layers of government."

Others put blame for the chapter shutdown squarely on the shoulders of local leadership. "The old NAACP has done a great injustice to this community," says Sherman Rutledge Jr., chair of the current NAACP's legal redress committee. "They abused the essence of what the NAACP stands for. They were playing a very dangerous game, and that game was 'How much money can we get from casinos using racial discrimination as a platform to do that?'"

That was then, this is now

In the press, the NAACP resurfaced for the first time in a while on Feb. 4, when it held a news conference in front of the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse to decry acts of racism at the Southern Highlands Golf Club. Embroiled in a discrimination lawsuit against the golf course community over the termination of his membership, Southern Highlands resident Steve Ferguson said his daughters found in December 2002 a poster of a hanging black man on their door with a printed message: "THE ONLY GOOD NIGGER IS A DEAD NIGGER!!! GET YOUR BLACK ASS OUT OF SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS!!!!!!!"

In many ways, the conference typified the NAACP's historic penchant for down-and-dirty battles (while the NAACP wasn't suing, it had worked closely with private lawyers to vet the lawsuit). It also reflected an organization that, on a nuts-and-bolts level, was functional if not robust.

Since getting its charter reinstated in 2002--and since Ishman, originally part of the reorganization team hand-picked by national headquarters, rose to president--the local branch has taken concrete if not glamorous steps toward a solid future in the valley. The branch has an office, recently scored approval for a bulk rate mailing permit, and membership (which is "trickling in," says Ishman) hovers at about 500. However, many would-be joiners are still holding back.

"We haven't brought a lot of people back because of the problems in the past," Ishman says. "A lot of people are in a wait-and-see mode."

Launa Wilson, chair of the membership committee, agrees. "Of course, there were concerns in the past. While it hasn't led to a bad reputation, there may be some skepticism on the part of some people."

Ishman's tack: a broader reach beyond the traditional bounds of the NAACP--usually considered an exclusively African-American organization. "I'm trying to work closely with the Hispanic and Asian communities and say, 'Look, let's not focus on the differences, let's focus on the things we can agree on. Let's go at this together and see if we can get this remedied.' I don't see the NAACP as a black-owned, black-only organization."

The lack of racial diversity prompted Peggy Maze Johnson, a white environmental activist, to come on board. At an NAACP fundraising dinner in 2003, she couldn't help but notice how homogenous--how black--the crowd was. "One thing I see is that a lot of the big corporations give money, but the big guys at the top, the white guys, aren't coming," she says. "The original purpose of the organization wasn't about the black community struggling by itself. It was meant to be a mingling of the community to solve community problems."

Not everyone agrees with Ishman's open-arms approach. "I've been criticized by some ill-mannered folks for that, yes," he says, declining to mention names. "There are just some people who are small-minded and narrow-minded, and they have a right to their opinion. But we don't own discrimination. It affects more than just the African-American population."

The good fights

Broadening the NAACP makes sense; after all, more members means more money. And in the meantime, without much money, the organization has to choose its battles wisely.

Those battles are the province of the organization's legal redress committee, a corps of volunteer lawyers who fight the organization's ground war against racism and discrimination. With the committee actively pursuing more than 250 cases, some say the revamped organization needs to be careful what fronts it chooses to fight on.

Some critics within the organization who wish not to be identified say the NAACP's Feb. 4 press conference was ill-conceived, as it grabbed for easy headlines, selling an easily digestible narrative about a predominantly white golf course community discriminating against a black man (further compromised by the fact that lawyers for Southern Highlands say Ferguson's golf membership was revoked because he failed to disclose he was a convicted felon).

Meanwhile, the hundreds of less glamorous cases of workplace discrimination go comparatively unremarked. The same critics characterize Ishman as too friendly, and that his ties to law enforcement might make the organization soft on the issue of police treatment of minorities. Others say it's about the person, not the package.

"Dean's got his own personality," says the Rev. Jesse Scott, NAACP member and a former president of the local branch. "It's like two lawyers in the courtroom. One may be dramatic, standing on top of the desk to make his case, and the other may speak just beyond a whisper. If he's able to convince the judge, he's getting the job done."

But while he's more likely to use the word alliance than attack, Ishman insists this revamped NAACP will have plenty of teeth.

"If you're going to discriminate against someone, then, yes, you should fear the NAACP," he says. "Given the ammunition, we're going to come after you and expose you for who you are. We'll be the barking dog."