Telling of Life Story Enlivens Mfume's Campaign

He went back to school, first at the Community College of Baltimore and then at Morgan State University. He became a real radio deejay, but there were still traces of the boy with the spoon, working intensely to improve his voice and persona.

"I used to love to just watch him gear himself up for that instant when he went on the air," said George Buntin, a college friend who hung out with Mfume in the studio. While songs were playing, they'd talk, joke, play chess. Then, as the last song faded, Mfume's focus shifted, going over his deejay's "rap" in his head. "He'd start tapping one foot. You'd see that serious appearance on his face."

Buntin saw where it was headed. When Mfume called to say he was running for Baltimore City Council in 1979, Buntin's reply was: "Why'd it take so long? Let's go."

Mfume won by three votes. After seven years on the council, he jumped into a U.S. House of Representatives race in 1986.

That, Mfume said, was when his life story became a political issue for the first time -- his Republican opponent held a news conference to criticize Mfume's having children out of wedlock.

It backfired, Mfume said, because people in the area knew that he was trying to be a good father to the boys. The unmarried father won 87 percent of the vote.

"It occurred to me," he says now, "that maybe there was some power to this story."

Controversy at the NAACP

Mfume, who lives in Baltimore, served nine years in Congress, becoming chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, then left his seat in 1996 to head the NAACP.

At each of these steps, the story he was telling about himself had a new and better ending.

At each step, the man with the radio-honed voice was learning to tell it better.

In real life, however, the happy ending hasn't been as neat.

His departure from the NAACP in 2004 was marred by a memo reporting that office rumors linked Mfume, who is divorced, with seven women at the organization and suggested he gave them raises and promotions.