NAACP May Leave Baltimore for D.C.

Chairman Wants to Pool Groups' Efforts

The chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People said yesterday that the organization is looking to move its headquarters from Baltimore to Washington, and some within the civil rights group said the move could happen within a year.

"The NAACP board voted a couple of years ago to move our headquarters from Baltimore to Washington," Chairman Julian Bond said in an interview. "We very much like Baltimore, it is a wonderful city. But Washington is the center of the universe in which we work."

The proposal to move the NAACP to the District is part of the chairman's strategy to synergize the agency with other civil rights groups in Washington. Bond first pitched the idea to the 64-member national board about a year ago, one of the group's regional directors said.

Bruce Gordon, the NAACP president and a former New York businessman who often commutes between Baltimore and Washington, is also in favor of the move, NAACP employees said. Gordon was on vacation in the Caribbean and could not be reached for comment.

"I think it's about time," said Alice Huffman, president of the NAACP's California state office and a member of the national board. "We were notified some time ago of the desire. There were no major objections. I think it would be fabulous. I think we could be so much more effective if we were in the nation's capital."

Inside the organization, employees who spoke on condition they not be named, for fear of being fired, said the move is predetermined and could happen within a year. The group is considering leasing a building in the District while launching a capital fundraising campaign with the hope of buying another.

In an interview with American Urban Radio, which broke the story, Bond was more circumspect, saying that the NAACP was only window shopping.

"The process is looking around in Washington and seeing if there's anything that's attractive to us," Bond said. The chairman said he had talked to the mayors of both cities, Martin O'Malley of Baltimore and Anthony A. Williams of the District.

D.C. Deputy Mayor Stanley Jackson said he has been talking off and on with the NAACP about its plans to relocate. "They were pursuing it last year, toward the end of '04, early '05," Jackson said. "There were a flurry of conversations for a couple of weeks, but there's been sort of a lull. . . . There's nothing in concrete."

Raquel Guillory, spokeswoman for O'Malley, who is running for governor, said the mayor had not spoken to Bond about the NAACP leaving Baltimore and left messages yesterday for him and Gordon to try to scheduled an expedited meeting on the issue.

"Of course we'd like to see the NAACP stay here," Guillory said. "If they do have intentions of leaving the city, we would put together an aggressive package to try to get them to stay."

Bond first voiced his proposal about five years ago, but Kweisi Mfume, who was NAACP president at the time, was cool to the idea. As a Baltimore City Council member in 1986, Mfume worked to bring the NAACP from Brooklyn, where it had leased office space since its inception in the early 1900s.

In a statement, Mfume, who is now running for a Maryland seat in the U.S. Senate, expressed disappointment over the possible move.

Staff writers Lori Montgomery and John Wagner contributed to this report.