Pictured are National Cleveland NAACP President Cornell William Brooks (wearing yellow stripped tie), the Rev. Gill Ford (in orange -patterned tie), who is the NAACP's national director of unit field operations and membership, Cleveland NAACP President the Rev. Hilton Smith (in red tie), the Rev . Dr. E. Theophilus Caviness  (in red tie), Cleveland NAACP Third Vice President Sara J. Harper, and George Forbes, a former longtime Cleveland NAACP president , former Cleveland City Council president, and current a part-time local attorney and general counsel for the Call and Post newspaper.

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and The Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473.

(Kathy Wray Coleman is a 22-year investigative and political journalist and legal reporter who trained for 17 years under five different editors at the Call and Post Newspaper, Ohio's most prominent Black press)

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Former longtime Cleveland NAACP president George Forbes, also a former Cleveland city council president and currently a part-time local attorney and general counsel for the Call and Post Newspaper, a Black weekly owned and published by international boxing promoter and Cleveland native Don King, has attacked Cleveland NAACP President the Rev. Hilton Smith in a scathing editorial published in the newspaper on June 3. (Editor's note: Forbes, along with Call and Post General Manager Kevin "Chill" Heard, edit the newspaper's editorial page. And Forbes was a Smith ally until recently).

The editorial comes on the heels of what some are calling a racist verdict by Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell, who last month freed White Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo of two counts of voluntary manslaughter relative to the shooting deaths of unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams, 30, and Timothy Russell, 43, both of them homeless at the time of the unprecedented killings on November 29, 2012.

Brelo gunned down the pair with 49 bullets. (Editor's note : The 12 other non Black police officers that did the shooting, replete with a total of 137 bullets, were not prosecuted per the support of county prosecutor Tim McGinty, and Ohio Attorney General Mike Dewine, both White, and both endorsed by local and state police unions. Protests following the verdict have been ongoing, and over 70 people have been arrested for skirmishes with police.The Cleveland NAACP did not speak out as to the failure to prosecute the 12 officers other than Brelo, and neither did the Call and Post, though since the verdict Smith has demanded that Brelo, who is on administrative leave without pay, be fired from his police job).

Other high profile Cleveland police killings of unarmed people that have activists and other community members upset include Tanisha Anderson, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Daniel Ficker, and Kenneth Smith.

"The truth of the matter is that the leadership of the Cleveland Branch of the NAACP is in a sad state of affairs at the most inopportune time," the editorial reads in part. "Not only has Cleveland NAACP president Hilton Smith been 'missing in action,' but even the guy who is threatening to run against him for president [Kent Whiotley] (if they are ever allowed to hold an election) hasn't shown up either."

The editorial mentions in particular Cleveland police killings of issue.

"With at least three cases of unarmed Black people dying at the hands of Cleveland police, an intercession of city government and police affairs by the federal Department of Justice, and a national wave of protest sweeping across the country, one would think, that if nothing else, NAACP leadership would be at the forefront of activities on behalf of our civil rights," the editorial says, also in part.

Meanwhile, the local chapter of the nation's oldest and most renowned Civil Rights organization for Black people is flat broke and its executive director, Sheila Wright, quit earlier this year saying she had not been paid in over four months.

One reason for the financial problems, sources said, is that the politically powerful Forbes, 84, a Black Democrat with ties to prominent Republicans, quit three  years ago after more than two decades at the leadership helm, and the annual Freedom Fund Dinner that generates revenue has not been held under Smith.

To make matters worse, the local chapter is in a brawl with the national group, led by NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, who stalled branch elections last year for officers and the 19-member executive committee and has continually ordered Smith, a senior vice president of communications for Turner Construction Company in Cleveland and an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland, to cease branch elections that were to occur last year.

Other high profile branch officers include first vice president the Rev Dr. E. Theophilus Caviness, who is also the executive director of the Greater Cleveland Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and senior pastor at Greater Abyssinia, and third vice president Sara J. Harper, a retired Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals judge.

Second vice president Bishop F.E. Perry, 84, died last month.

Cleveland NAACP Attorney Michael Nelson, who, along with branch attorney James Hardiman, who was briefly chapter president after Forbes quit and before Smith was elected in 2012, is a Forbes ally and so is Attorney Hardiman. The trio are in a dispute with Rev Smith, and Rev Caviness. (Editor's note: Nelson is also leading the charge of seeking to get a recall effort on the ballot against three-term Black Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, an unlikely gesture, whether noble or not, sources have said).

Late last year, the U.S Department of Justice found systemic problems in the largely White Cleveland Police Department , including illegal excessive force killings and erroneous pistil whippings of innocent people. A federal consent decree with the city and the DOJ as to its findings,  a decree which is similar to those under negotiation elsewhere, such as in Ferguson, Missouri, New York City and Baltimore, Maryland, is in the workings.

Harper wants unity,  she told Cleveland Urban News.Com. And she said that the Cleveland NAACP will survive the controversy.

"The local chapter and the national NAACP have always survived crises, and our branch will survive this and move forward," said Harper. "We need the NAACP."

The National NAACP has suspended the election process for Cleveland branch officers and executive committee members due in part to documented violations of organizational bylaws by the four-member nominating committee.

Longtime unit secretary Anderson broke the news about the election fiasco to the general membership in October of last year at what was to be a meeting for the nominating committee to introduce its slate of candidates for offices and the executive committee, and for the group to take nominations from the floor.

"They are temporarily suspending the process," said Anderson, who also told those there that the Rev. Gill Ford, the NAACP's national director of unit field operations and membership, had ordered the branch to cease all election-related activities until national NAACP officials can complete a thorough and comprehensive investigation.

In the wings is local architect Kent Whitley, who told Cleveland Urban News.Com that he is looking forward to the process of taking nominations from the floor as an ambitious candidate seeking to unseat Smith. The Call and Post editorial also says that Whitley is ill equipped to lead the organization and that a third party should intervene and start a new chapter in Cleveland.

At issue initially as to the election debacle is

the breach of bylaws relative to the four-member nominating committee, though a host of other problems are also key to the national takeover, sources said yesterday.

According to sources, another major complaint made to the national headquarters is that several members in good standing had not been notified by mail last year of the September meeting upon which the general membership elected the nominating committee, also a requirement of the organization bylaws.

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)