Mfume, Kweisi 1948–

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Kweisi Mfume 1948–

Politician, organization executive

Early Life Filled With Trouble

New Name and High-Profile Career

A Congressman with Clout

Took Over NAACP

Revived NAACP for New Century

Selected writings

Sources

As president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Kweisi Mfume is known in many circles as the new voice of hope for the African-American community. He overcame a rough and deprived childhood on the streets of Baltimore to exhibit all the eloquence, polish, and insider know-how of a seasoned politician. His personal history serves as a classic example of a man who made the concerted decision to improve his lot in life. From a gang member and father of five children by three different women in his late teens, he became first a local radio personality, then an impassioned city councilman and congressional representative for the district where he himself grew up. Then, in 1996, he left his secure seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and took over as the leader of the NAACP, facing many challenges as he attempted to reform the civil rights minded group for a new century.

Since 1996 Mfume has radically increased the visibility of the NAACP through rallies and lawsuits, boosted membership by almost 500,000 members, and gained Non-Governmental Organization status from the United Nations, which, according to the Knight-Rider/ Tribune Business News, “legitimizes its role as a consultant on foreign relations.” Susan Baer of the Baltimore Sun said that because of his actions, both in the government and in the NAACP, Mfume “has earned respect as a level-headed consensus-seeker” and is well-known for his “eloquence and widespread appeal.”

Early Life Filled With Trouble

Mfume was born Frizzell Gray on October 24, 1948, in a working class neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. He recalled in the Washington Post that he was so sickly as a youngster that his parents nicknamed him “Pee Wee.” His stepfather worked as a truck driver, and his mother took odd jobs as she could find them, but the family was often desperately short of cash. Nevertheless, young Mfume was a good student who was protective of his three younger sisters. In his home, wrote a U.S. News & World Report correspondent, his parents emphasized “education and civil rights.” President John F. Kennedy and later Martin Luther King, Jr. were role models. “Yet they had to watch the 1963 march on Washington on TV because the 40-mile trip cost too much.” Mfume attended a segregated school, although the Supreme Court had outlawed such segregation in 1955. According to the U.S. News & World Report, “[Mfume] could never figure out why he passed three schools to get to his own. Still, school was fine—until his world caved in.”

First Mfume’s stepfather left the family. Then, when he was 16, his mother discovered she had cancer. She literally died in Mfume’s arms quite suddenly one evening. He was devastated. Mfume told U.S. News & World Report: “My mother was and, even in death, probably still is the most important person in my life. After she died of cancer, things spun out of control.”

Mfume quit school in his sophomore year and went to work full-time to help support his sisters. Financial

At a Glance…

Born Frizzell Cray on October 24, 1948, in Baltimore, MD; son of Mary Elizabeth (a factory worker}; divorced; children: five sons. Education: Morgan State University, BA (magna cum laude), 1976; Johns Hopkins University, MA, 1984, Politics: Democrat Religion: Baptist.

Career: WEBB radio, Baltimore, MD, announcer, 1972–74; Morgan State University public radio, announcer and talk show host, 1974–78; Baltimore City Council, councilman, 1978–87; U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC, congressional representative from the Seventh District of Maryland, 1987–96, chairman of Congressional Black Caucus, 1993–96; NAACP, president and CEO, 1996-; author, 1996-.

Memberships: Baltimore Museum of Art, board of trustees; Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, senior advisory committee; University of Maryland, Meyerhoff national advisory board; Enterprise Foundation, board of trustees; Big Brothers and Big Sisters; Center Stage, Theater for a New Generation Advocacy, honorable chair; Morgan State University, Board of Regents.

Awards: Drum Major for Justice Award, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1997; Intergenerational Award, Sister 2 Sister magazine, 2000.

Addresses: Office— NAACP, President 4805 Mt Hope Dr., Baltimore, MD 21215.

troubles forced the siblings into different households. At times Mfume worked as many as three different jobs in a week—full-time in a bread factory, part-time in a local grocery, and as a shoeshine boy on Sundays. The pace began to take a toll, especially since he saw so many of his peers enjoying themselves at high school dances and other social events. “After two or three years of that I just went kind of wild,” he told the Washington Post. “I went to hell, quite frankly. I just couldn’t understand why everybody else had parents, had a house to go to and had dinner on the table when I didn’t have any of those things. I couldn’t understand why I was being punished.”

Mfume began hanging out on the street corner with friends. “Not only did I run with all the worst people, I became the leader,” he recalled in U.S. News & World Report. “I was locked up a couple of times on suspicion of theft because I happened to be black and happened to be young. And before I knew it, I was a teenage parent, not once but twice, three times, four times, five times.” Mfume did not marry the mothers of his children, but he has always taken responsibility for the boys.

The big change for Mfume came on a hot July night in the late 1960s. He had been loitering and drinking with his friends, when suddenly he began to feel strange. “People were standing around shooting craps and everything else, and something just came over me,” he remembered in Business Week. “I said, ‘I can’t live like this anymore.’ And I walked away.” Mfume spent the rest of the night in prayer, then proceeded to earn his high school equivalency and pursue a college degree. “I took a lot of grief from friends, but I never went back,” he told the Washington Post.

New Name and High-Profile Career

In an effort to connect with his African heritage, Mfume adopted a new name in the early 1970s. His aunt traveled to Ghana and suggested the name when she returned. “Kweisi Mfume” is a phrase of Ibo derivation that translates as “conquering son of kings.” It turned out to be an appropriate choice for someone who would one day conquer the power structure in the nation’s capital. Washington Post contributor Kent Jenkins, Jr. wrote: “For Mfume, the new name was more than an affectation. It signaled an awakening of his social consciousness and an increasing interest in politics. Like many young African Americans, he was appalled by the continuing impact of racism in America. But Mfume decided to do something about it and quickly settled on a line of attack: He would go on the radio and talk about it.”

In the early 1970s, most black Baltimoreans listened to WEBB radio, a station owned by none other than the “godfather of soul,” James Brown. Mfume began his tenure with the station as an unpaid volunteer, then he became a news reader, and finally he earned a spot as an announcer. Despite pleas from management, he refused to part with his new name. Nor would he conform to the station’s low-key political profile. “What Mfume had to say was not what WEBB had bargained for,” noted Jenkins. “He was supposed to read commercials and introduce R&B records. But before long he was playing protest songs by jazz artist Gil Scott-Heron, reading poems by Nikki Giovanni and conducting call-in political seminars. The audience was electrified.”

Concurrently, Mfume earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from Morgan State University in 1976. When that college opened a noncommercial radio station, Mfume was hired as program director. Finally he had found a congenial forum for a political talk show. According to Jenkins, Mfume “became one of the strongest voices in Baltimore’s black community, slamming the Democratic clubhouse organizations that dominated city politics. He aimed his most blistering remarks at [then-Baltimore mayor] William Donald Schaefer accusing him of ignoring poor neighborhoods while lavishing money on downtown redevelopment.” Mfume’s growing popularity as a radio personality convinced him to try his hand at politics. In 1978 he ran for Baltimore City Council.

That decision marked the occasion for another change. A seasoned political advisor told Mfume not to expect success unless he changed his attire from dashikis and jewelry to conservative suits and ties. Mfume took the advice, and he won a seat on the city council in 1978 by a mere three votes. Jenkins wrote: “On the council, Mfume moderated his dress but not his political approach, raining rhetorical fire on the city’s power structure. His attacks on Schaefer were particularly poisonous and the mayor’s contempt for Mfume was legendary.” The two men almost came to blows on several occasions.

Gradually Mfume became aware that politics was a game of coalition-building and compromise, rather than confrontation. He learned the delicate art of negotiation and even eventually developed a congenial relationship with Schaefer. Mfume told Business Week of his former nemesis, “We could go to our graves battling each other, or we could get things done.”

A Congressman with Clout

In 1986 a more temperate and polished Mfume announced his candidacy for the Seventh Congressional District, to replace retiring congressman Parren J. Mitchell. Mfume’s opponents in the election tried to make an issue of his checkered past, reminding voters that the councilman had dropped out of high school and fathered illegitimate children. The strategy backfired when Mfume’s sons stepped forward to praise their father and the candidate pointed to his degrees from Morgan State and the Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a master’s degree in 1984. Mfume won the congressional seat with three times the number of votes of his next closest opponent and prepared to go to Congress in 1987. In the Washington Post, he recalled that many of his freshman colleagues on Capitol Hill were astounded that he had won with such an unusual name.

Jenkins wrote: “Since coming to Congress Mfume has followed a traditional path that belies his unorthodox roots.” When he found himself on the House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs, Mfume educated himself on banking issues and economics. When his district was reapportioned to include some more rural regions of Maryland he immersed himself in farming and zoning laws so as to be able to represent his new constituents. He also developed a presence in Congress by volunteering to preside over sessions when the Speaker of the House was not present—a job that requires an understanding of arcane procedures that date to previous centuries. Mfume told the Washington Post: “I wanted people to get used to me real quick because I didn’t plan on leaving.”

At the same time, Mfume established himself as a liberal who stood solidly on the platform of expanded federal aid to inner cities. He never let a week go by that he did not return to Baltimore to deal firsthand with his constituents—a vast majority of whom are city dwellers. “I keep coming back to these communities and the lessons I learned here because that’s what got me where I am,” he told the Washington Post. “When I can’t get anything moving in Washington I can always come back here. Whatever I’m doing in Washington, if it doesn’t matter here, it doesn’t matter.”

Over time Mfume became “a key player in shaping the debate and legislation aimed at curing the ills of the nation’s inner cities,” according to Stodghill and Dunham. In his fourth term, Mfume had earned enough political clout to win the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus, a body that became increasingly important to the House throughout the early 1990s. An overwhelming majority of the Congressional Black Caucus members were Democratic, but Mfume set a maverick tone for the group. Soon after his election as chairman, Mfume and the Caucus openly criticized President Clinton for withdrawing support for U.S. Justice Department nominee Lani Guinier. Later the Caucus presented a list of “non-negotiable” demands to the Clinton White House, most of them having to do with federal aid to cities and the poor. “Not too many brothers or sisters would say ‘no’ to the president,” Benjamin Chavis, then-executive director of the NAACP, was quoted as saying in Emerge. Mfume told Business Week, “No longer are we going to be looked at as an addendum to the Democratic agenda. We are going to be taken seriously. If that means killing an important piece of [leadership-backed] legislation, then that will be the case.”

Took Over NAACP

In November of 1994 the Republican party won a majority of the votes cast for Congress, and the shift in power caused many changes in the House of Representatives, including, according to the Knight-Ridder/ Tribune News Service, “the official dissolution of power of the Congressional Black Caucus.” Mfume and other black representatives lost a good deal of the pull they held during the early 1990s and many felt that the issues that concerned them and their constituents would be tabled by the Republican-run Congress. Some of the representatives decided to retire, others attempted to make moves onto different committees in order to regain some of their power.

Another momentous event occurred earlier that same year that would have a direct impact on Mfume’s political career. Executive director for the NAACP Benjamin Chavis was fired in August of 1994, leaving the organization without a leader and in dire financial trouble. It wasn’t long before Mfume was approached by the NAACP to take over as the new president and CEO of the organization and by December of 1995, Mfume had accepted. Many people were shocked that Mfume would leave Congress considering his popularity within his district as well as his still considerable clout within the House, but as Mfume told Black Enterprise, “In Congress, I could continue to wage the battle of being a minority party member fighting against a majority party and representing only one congressional district. Or, I could take advantage of the umbrella of the NAACP, effectively organize in 90% of all congressional districts around this country and challenge firsthand the representatives who vote against the interests of our community and who slow our economic empowerment.”

Mfume officially took over the NAACP in February of 1996, and, along with the assumption of leadership, came the numerous challenges that the organization was facing. Most pressing perhaps was the financial trouble that Chavis had left the NAACP in after his misuse of funds and unnecessary spending. As Mfume told Black Enterprise in 1995, “My first priority is to put in place an apparatus that will allow for absolute fiscal accountability that is beyond reproach. I want people to know that, from this point on, we will never be in a position of having to explain fiscal problems for whatever reasons and why proper follow-up was not done.” By 1997 Mfume had created a system that accounted for all spending in the organization that erased the deficit of $4 million and created a $2 million surplus. This would be only the first of Mfume’s successes with the NAACP.

Revived NAACP for New Century

In 1998 Mfume, along with NAACP chairman of the board Julian Bond, decided to begin making the group more proactive as it had been in the 1950s and 1960s. Their first target was network television stations. Mfume and Bond approached the major networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX, and threatened them with everything from nationwide boycotts of their programming and their sponsors to full-blown lawsuits for discrimination both on the television screen and behind the scenes in executive positions. All four networks agreed to sign diversity initiatives in 1999, and the NAACP kept close tabs on the progress of these networks. The NAACP also bought 100 shares of stock in the four networks so that, according to Mfume in the Business Wire, “we can go to the board meeting and raise the kind of hell and the issues we think are necessary.” By 2001 some of the networks were producing more television programs for African Americans and other minority viewers and many had instituted executives of minority status as well, but even so, it was still a far cry from what the NAACP hoped to accomplish. Mfume went back to the networks in 2001 and again threatened boycotts and class action lawsuits, which resulted in an even bigger response from the networks. Executive positions were created at the networks to deal with diversity in programming, positions that were filled by minorities themselves, and scheduled even more minority programming in prime-time. The NAACP and Mfume continue to examine the issue every year.

Network television is but one of many areas to which the NAACP has extended its influence. In November of 2000 Mfume attacked the political system fiercely over the voting fiasco in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. With many other groups behind him, he brought suits against the government for stifling the minority vote in Florida by printing confusing ballots and then refusing to allow a revote. In 2002 Mfume criticized President George W. Bush for ignoring the NAACP and for refusing to meet with them to discuss minority issues. He told the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, “You can’t be president of all the people when you only want to deal with some of the people.” Mfume also resumed the groups’ interest in and heavy support for affirmative action in 2003 saying to the Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, “We will litigate against colleges, universities and any other institutions of higher education who want to continue not to comply and find a way to continue to get around the law.”

Perhaps the most significant direction that Mfume has taken the NAACP in is that of international affairs. In January of 2003 the NAACP was granted Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status by the United Nations. By becoming an NGO, the NAACP is able to serve as an advisor and consultant to foreign governments and can also serve on the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council. Mfume took full advantage of this status and began to travel to numerous countries, many in Africa and the Caribbean, to fight for the rights of people of color worldwide. Many in the organization felt that the NAACP was beginning to spread itself too thin, and that it would begin to ignore national issues in favor of larger, international problems. But Mfume assured his members, according to the Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, “It doesn’t mean we have lost sight of all the domestic issues we have in the United States. It just means the organization is going back to the way it was originally with W.E.B. Du Bois, who was a pan-Africanist who founded us. Our struggle is not just with the United States. Our struggles is throughout the world.”

Mfume has been praised for his numerous achievements with the NAACP, receiving a Drum Major for Justice Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1997 and an Intergenerational Award from Sister 2 Sister magazine in 2000. He has also been an inspiration to many through his autobiography, No Free Ride: From The Mean Streets To The Mainstream, which he published in 1996. Many look to him as the next great leader of the African-American community, for he is already being “compared to African American heroes such as Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, Mary McLeod Bethune and W.E.B. Du Bois.” noted Black Enterprise. The magazine went on to say that Mfume is perhaps the one who can “restore the NAACP to its glory and rekindle the lost faith of younger African Americans.”

Selected writings

No Free Ride: From the Mean Streets To The Mainstream, OneWorld Publications, 1996.

(With Michael R. Gardner and George M. Elsey) Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risk, Southern Illinois University Press, 2002.