Chavis is the one who invited Farrakan and Sista Soulja into the fold. Actually, when I look at what the NAACP has done under Mfume I can find very little.
Here's a clip about Chavis' demise:
>By far the most crucial and controversial initiative launched by Ben Chavis, however, was the effort to build greater unity among the diverse organizations, agencies and leadership within Black America. From the outset Chavis made it clear that he would reach out to sectors of the Black community traditionally ignored by the NAACP e.g., rapactivist, gang leaders, nationalists, pan-africanists and the Black left. Chavis argued that the process of building unity in the Black community should embrace every important sector of Black America including the Nation of Islam and Minister Louis Farrakhan. Hence, over the objection of some inside the NAACP and powerful forces external to the NAACP and the Black community, Minister Farrakhan was invited to sit at the table with other leaders at the National African American Leadership Summit which Ben Chavis convened under the auspices of the NAACP.
With a growing tide of nationalist sentiment sweeping Black America, the images of Black leaders standing in unity at the Summit sparked great hope among Black people of all walks of life. However, the site of Farrakhan, who has been consistently accused of engaging in anti-semitic behavior, sitting at the table with other African American leaders sent shock waves through much of the Jewish community and other traditional bases of support for the NAACP. Indeed, Michael Lerner, editor of the liberal Jewish magazine Tikkun, led a small band of pickets to Baltimore to protest the inclusion of Farrakhan in the Summit; an act which was viewed as an infringement on the right of selfdetermination by many within the Black community.
There is little doubt that the vision and programmatic thrust of Ben Chavis breathed new life into the NAACP and sparked renewed interest in the Black freedom struggle. The membership of the NAACP swelled dramatically from about 475,000 to 650,000 during Chavis's brief 16 month tenure. More than 60 percent of the new members were African American youth. People who had long since given up on the NAACP as an outdated organization reassessed their position and joined the Association. In my judgement, the NAACP under the leadership of Chavis, Myers and Rojas was on the verge of igniting a new human rights/civil rights movement to finish the unfinished agenda of the civil rights movement of the `1960s; a movement which for differing reasons was viewed as frightening by powerful forces external to the Black community.
Actually, the campaign to unseat Ben Chavis began within weeks of his selection as Executive Director. It did not take long for the major news organizations to discover and report that the top leadership of the NAACP included two dangerous lefties in the persons of Myers and Rojas. Myers also came under attack because of his role as a former legal advisor and confidant of Minister Farrakhan. It became clear almost immediately that many of the foundations and corporations which provided nearly 40 percent of the NAACP's annual budget were quite concerned about the prospects of a different kind of NAACP under the leadership of Chavis, Myers and Rojas. Hardly a month went by without some red baiting or magnification of the Associations debt in the news medla <
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/daniels1.htm
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