Honor for Tarnished Clippers Owner Turns Spotlight on N.A.A.C.P. Branch
When the racist words of Donald Sterling spilled out in a recording last week, the incident not only caused the N.B.A. to ban Mr. Sterling for life, it also drew attention to the N.A.A.C.P.'s small Los Angeles branch, which had been planning to honor Mr. Sterling with a lifetime achievement award this month.
Officials from the NAACP California state conference are now reviewing why the branch was planning to give one of its highest awards to Mr. Sterling, who has been accused of racially offensive comments and discriminating against blacks and Hispanics before, a person familiar with the review said.
At the center of that investigation is the man that many people familiar with the N.A.A.C.P. say spearheaded the effort to honor Mr. Sterling, Leon Jenkins, the branch president. Under Mr. Jenkins’s leadership, the group gave Mr. Sterling a similar award in 2009. On Monday Mr. Jenkins announced that the organization had rescinded its award to Mr. Sterling, the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, whose foundations have given the Los Angeles group at least $45,000 since 2007, records show.
Mr. Jenkins, who became a judge in a district court of Detroit in 1983, was removed from the bench in 1991 and then disbarred in Michigan in 1994 for accepting bribes to dismiss traffic citations, misstating his address to lower his insurance premiums, soliciting a person to commit perjury and other ethical violations, according to court records in Michigan.
After a federal investigation led to an indictment, Mr. Jenkins was acquitted of charges including mail fraud, extortion and bribery. But the Supreme Court of Michigan, which oversaw Mr. Jenkins’s work, conducted its own investigation and concluded that
from 1984 to 1987 Mr. Jenkins “systematically and routinely sold his office and his public trust.” The high court removed him from the bench and he was subsequently disbarred in the state.
Mr. Jenkins moved to California but was prevented from practicing law in the state in 2001 because of his problems in Michigan. The bar association has twice rejected his applications for reinstatement, most recently last year, on the grounds that he “failed to establish his rehabilitation from his past misconduct or that he presently possesses the necessary moral qualifications for reinstatement.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/us/donald-sterling-honor-turns-spotlight-on-naacp-branch.html?hp
Seems i hit a nerve. My apologies.
