Retired Verizon executive to be NAACP chief

ATLANTA — Turning to a businessman to lead one of the nation's seminal civil rights groups, the NAACP's board of directors announced Saturday that Bruce S. Gordon, a retired Verizon executive, will be its next president.

"Civil rights leaders throughout this country did what they did and died, so my generation has full responsibility to walk in the doors those brave people opened," Gordon said after the board voted. "It's fabulous, exciting, humbling."

Gordon was selected by a large majority of the board to succeed Kweisi Mfume, former U.S. representative and a candidate for Senate in Maryland who resigned abruptly in December. Several months later, a report surfaced that his personal relationships with NAACP staffers had contributed to widespread mismanagement at national headquarters in Baltimore. One staff member threatened to sue.

Jeanetta Williams, president of the Salt Lake City branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Gordon's "corporate-oriented" background will spark a focus on discrimination in the workplace.

"One of the things that's going to be coming out of his leadership will be the ability to do greater outreach into the different communities and talk about discrimination and employment and the glass ceiling of minorities," said Williams, who served on the NAACP's board between 1996 and 2002. "We're happy that he's on board and addressing all of those and other civil rights issues."

Williams said another of Gordon's efforts will be to increase the NAACP's membership numbers.

"We are a membership-driven organization," she said. "The NAACP is not only an organization for African Americans. We want people to know that if they are black, white, red or yellow they can be members. We say that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People comes in all colors."

In Salt Lake City, Williams estimated there are between 600 and 800 members.

Described as a top-notch leader and consensus-builder, Gordon, 59, began his career in 1968 as a management trainee at Bell of Pennsylvania. For 35 years, amid massive upheaval in the telecommunications industry, he helped the company navigate the string of mergers that led it to become Verizon Communications Inc. When he retired in December 2003, he was chief of Verizon's biggest division — retail markets.