CLEVELAND , Ohio-The executive board of the Cleveland Chapter of the NAACP unanimously accepted the resignation of its president, George Forbes, at its monthly meeting on Tues. evening, putting to rest controversy over who was leading the Civil Rights organization while the 81-year-old Forbes has been in Florida with his wife in recent months or years.
James Hardiman, the Cleveland attorney who represented the NAACP in the now defunct Cleveland schools desegregation case and the first vice president, will, by organization charter, take the helm until the November general election, one that is expected to draw a cross section of candidates including the Rev. Hilton Smith, an associate minister at Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church in Cleveland, Rev. Tony Minor, executive director of the United Pastor's in Mission, Mount Olive Baptist Church Pastor Larry Harris, and Dr. Eugene Jordan, an East Cleveland dentist and second vice president for the group.
Hardiman,70, has said that he will not run for president.
The legal counsel for the Call and Post Newspaper, Ohio's Black press that is owned by internationally known boxing promoter Don King, and a former Cleveland City Council president famous for throwing a chair at Cleveland Ward 8 Councilman Jeff Johnson and for losing a bid for mayor against former protege Michael R. White in 1989, Forbes is one of Cleveland's most colorful Black leaders, and one that has been a power broker on political and community issues affecting the Black community for more than four decades beginning when he was first elected to city council in 1963.
He also made national news for putting state Sen Nina Turner (D-25) on the cover of the Call and Post in Aunt Jemima attire in retaliation for her support of a voter adopted Cuyahoga County governmental reform measure that replaced the three member Board of Commissioners and all other elected county offices except the judges and the county prosecutor with a county executive and an 11 -member county council.
Forbes and Cleveland NAACP officials have come under fire in recent years by community activists and others for ignoring Black issues of public concern, including malfeasance around the Imperial Avenue Murders, harassment of Blacks by the common pleas and municipal courts in Cuyahoga County, illegal foreclosures, and the denial of construction and other work to a representative number of Black contractors and other Blacks on lucrative projects such as the Cleveland Medical Mart and the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland, which opens in downtown Cleveland this month.
Reach Editor and Journalist Kathy Wray Coleman at editor@clevelandurbannews.com and phone number: 216-659-0473.
