NAACP committee to search for new CEO

Family: Married to Lia Epperson Jealous, a civil rights lawyer and law professor at American University in Washington. They live in Silver Spring, Md., with their 7-year-old daughter, Morgan, and 1-year-old son, Jack.

Occupation: President and CEO of the 104-year-old National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which is headquartered in Baltimore. He was its youngest-ever president when he was appointed in 2008 at the age of 35.

Education: Earned a degree in political science in 1994 from Columbia University in New York. He was suspended at Columbia for organizing a student protest of the university's plan to tear down the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated. He was selected in 1997 as a Rhodes Scholar to attend Oxford University, where he studied comparative social research.

Career: While at Columbia, worked as a community organizer in Harlem for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Later worked as an investigative reporter for the Jackson, Miss., Advocate, and as executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. He also worked at the Rosenberg Foundation and for Amnesty International.

Quote: "It just became clear during the month of August that I needed to go ahead and keep my promise to my daughter," he said of a pledge to her to stay at the NAACP for only five years.

Leaders of the nation’s largest civil rights group pledged to continue fighting for voting rights, health care, a higher minimum wage and immigration reform, even as the NAACP begins searching for a new president and CEO.

After suffering turbulent leadership changes and scandals in the past, NAACP board members said the 104-year-old group is poised for a smooth transition this time as it seeks to replace outgoing President Benjamin Jealous. He announced Sunday that he would step down at the end of the year.

Chairwoman Roslyn Brock said the board is disappointed Jealous is leaving after five years but that the group remains energized on issues nationwide.

“The NAACP is alive, and it’s well,” Brock said. “We have a strategic plan in place that will help guide our work for the next 50 years.”

Brock said the NAACP’s board is forming a search committee to find someone to succeed Jealous.

Former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond said there had been no indication at the board’s last meeting in July that Jealous would leave, but he added that leading the organization is an extremely difficult job.

“We’ve had our ups and downs over the years, but we’ve had a wonderful, wonderful steward for the past five years, and he’s brought an enormous amount of energy to the NAACP,” Bond said. “We’re going to be much poorer without him.”

In a written statement, Jealous vowed the transition to a new leader would be orderly and planned. “Their success will be my success,” he said.

When he was hired for the job in 2008, Jealous became the group’s youngest-ever leader at 35. The job is unique in its intensity, Jealous said Monday, because “you commit to work 24/7/365 and spend half your year on an airplane and every minute working to advance the cause of civil and human rights.”

Jealous said he had been increasingly wrestling with the need to spend more time with his family. Several years ago, he told his daughter that he needed five years to do important work at the NAACP.

“I thought about that promise a lot. My daughter has reminded me every birthday since then,” Jealous said “It just became clear during the month of August that I needed to go ahead and keep my promise to my daughter.”

The 40-year-old Jealous says he also wants to teach at a university and start a political action committee focused on promoting black and Latino candidates, along with progressives of all races.

Jealous said during a conference call Monday that he signed a new contract last year that was negotiated to keep him at the NAACP for a maximum of three more years. He says there was a clause allowing him to leave sooner.

Several members of the group’s 64-member board said they were not surprised Jealous chose to step down and that he was leaving on his own terms.

Still, Jerry Mondeshire, the head of the Philadelphia NAACP and a national board member, said friction between Jealous and Brock may have led to an early departure.

“I think the combination of the strain on his family and the ongoing friction, he decided to exit earlier,” said Mondeshire, adding that he was a critic of Jealous at first but that he was won over by Jealous’ fundraising and modernization of the NAACP.

Brock said she is not aware of any tension that drove Jealous out.

“As with any organization, you’re never going to have, with a 64-member board, everyone in agreement on any one issue at any given time,” she said.

Brock said the board devised a strategic plan with Jealous to guide the group for years to come.

“An organization that is 104 years old, it can’t be really about one person doing the job,” she said. “It has to really lie within the hearts and minds of those who believe in the mission.”