C-C-Can't the NAACP All Get Along?

After only 19 months at the top of the NAACP, President Bruce Gordon is resigning:

The president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said on Sunday that he was stepping down after only 19 months on the job, signaling divisions within the organization, the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights group.

The president, Bruce S. Gordon, 61, a former Verizon executive who was relatively unknown in the civil rights community when he was tapped to run the N.A.A.C.P., said he resigned because of differences with the board over his role and the direction of the organization.

“In order for any organization to be effective, there has to be a tight alignment between the C.E.O. and the board,” Mr. Gordon said. “That alignment in this case does not exist.”

In interviews, black leaders close to the organization said the reasons behind his departure stemmed from a dispute over its future role in a nation where the battlefront for civil rights has shifted.

“We want it to be a social justice organization; he wanted it to be more of a social service organization,” said Julian Bond, the chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. board. “Our mission is to fight racial discrimination and provide social justice. Social service organizations deal with the effects of racial discrimination. We deal with the beast itself.

Gordon seemed to be a fairly reasonable guy, and even got President Bush to speak to the group for the first time in years, but that reasonableness may well have cost him his job. Chairman Julian Bond is one of the most bitter partisans and anti-Bush voices in the black community, having made numerous completely outrageous accusations against the president. It appears that there's no place for reasonable politics in the NAACP, let along non-partisanship which is supposed to be a requirement of their non-profit status.