DERRICK JOHNSON WITH REV. DR. T. ANTHONY SPEARMAN
REV. DR. T. ANTHONY SPEARMAN
EXCLUSIVE
REV. SPEARMAN FILES DEFAMATION
LAWSUIT AGAINST NAACP HEAD,
NC NAACP PREZ, AND SIX OTHERS
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
The former president of the NC NAACP has filed a blistering 28-page lawsuit against national NAACP Pres./CEO Derrick Johnson and Board of Directors Chairman Leon W. Russell, along with six other NC NAACP officers including current NC NAACP President Deborah Dicks Maxwell and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Chapter Pres. Corrine Mack“…in their individual capacities for Defamation and for a Civil Conspiracy to have Plaintiff (Spearman) removed from the Office of the president of the North Carolina NAACP,” according to the lawsuit.
Rev. Spearman’s lawsuit, filed by Greensboro attorney Mark T. Cummings of the Cummings Legal Group in Guilford County Superior Court, contends that “the Defendants conspired to have Plaintiff (Spearman) removed because of his support of victim of sexual harassment (Ms. Jazmyne Childs) who brought litigation against the National NAACP and an employee/member of the North Carolina State Conference NAACP (Rev. Curtis Gatewood) and because of Plaintiff’s growing national profile stemming from his many successful and high-profile activities on behalf of the People of North Carolina and the NC NAACP.”
Gatewood has denied the sexual harassment charge, and is not a defendant in Rev. Spearman’s lawsuit, though he is alluded to.
Rev. Spearman contends that because he stood with Ms. Childs publicly when she tearfully accused Pres./CEO Johnson in 2019 of ignoring her repeated cries to suspend Rev. Gatewood after her 2017 sexual harassment allegations were confirmed by an external investigation, Spearman became a target for retribution.
In Rev. Spearman’s suit, he alleges that Johnson supported Gatewood to oppose him for reelection as NC NAACP president in 2019, only to back off once Ms. Childs and her supporters went public. That’s when Johnson finally suspended Gatewood’s membership.
But then, Spearman alleges that Johnson and NAACP Board Chairman Russell “…devised a plan to remove… [Pres. Spearman] and other member-leaders of the [NC NAACP]” for supporting her.
With the help of at least six other Defendants, a plan was devised to falsely accuse Spearman of fiscal malfeasance, seemingly “forcing” Johnson to put the NC NAACP under the control of a national administrator.
For his part, in a “plan of action” email dated Sept. 27, 2019, Rev. Gatewood advised his campaign supporters, in an open letter, to distract the press “from the serious allegations of sexual harassment made against him with allegations of “rumored …theft and/or misappropriation of NC NAACP finances…” over the previous five years.
Gatewood accused Rev. William Barber, Pres. Spearman’s NC NAACP predecessor, of trying to help Spearman by causing the Childs controversy.
Rev. Barber denied Gatewood’s charges when queried by this reporter then, saying that charges of misappropriation weren’t possible because he implemented a two-signature verification system once he took over the state conference from 2005-2017. That system remained in place during Rev. Spearman’s tenure for all disbursements.
Evidence shows the attempts to smear NC NAACP leadership didn’t stop there.
An October 19, 2019 story by this reporter about a volatile confrontation at the 2019 NC NAACP Convention in Winston-Salem between some NC NAACP members from Alamance County, who supported Gatewood, and Spearman, at a church, reported:
Members of that branch alleged that Dr. Spearman “…faces allegations of financial misconduct, and that Gatewood had promised to audit the state organization if he were elected,” according to the Winston-Salem Journal.
Sources close to Dr. Spearman, however, dispute those allegations, saying that the structure of the NC NAACP hierarchy and procedures after Rev. [William] Barber took over in 2005 from the previous president wouldn’t allow for that to happen without more than one [NC NAACP}officer involved.
What most people also did not know is that Rev. Barber routinely had the NC NAACP fiscal books audited, and Rev. Spearman continued that practice when he took over. That was not a requirement or normal practice of NAACP branches nationwide.
“The purpose of Defendants’ plan to damage [Spearman’s] reputation was to ensure that when the elections resumed, [Spearman] would have a difficult time being re-elected,” the lawsuit maintained.
Constitutional violations were being alleged against Spearman, but none were ever brought forward to a hearing or forum of due process.
The suit further alleges that by removing Spearman and his leadership team, any and all cooperation with Jazmyne Childs in her sexual harassment case against Gatewood and the national NAACP would cease because needed documents would be unavailable to her.
It was at that same October 2019 convention when Johnson flew to Winston-Salem, and publicly lambasted Ms. Childs for going public with her charges, that the national administratorship was also announced for the state conference, with national Board member Gloria J. Sweet-Love put in charge.
February 2020, Ms. Childs filed suit in Durham Superior Court against the NAACP and Rev. Gatewood, and September 2020 when she added Derrick Johnson to her lawsuit for publicly making false statements about her at the NCNAACP Convention.
False allegations and personal attacks continued to circulate against Rev. Spearman from those who opposed him, making it difficult for him to lead the state conference.
By October 2021, Deborah Dicks Maxwell was allegedly supported by Johnson, Russell and Sweet-Love to oppose his presidency. Sweet-Love allegedly, without notice, changed the election process normally conducted per NAACP Constitution and Bylaws, and when it was all over, Ms. Maxwell was the victor, ousting Rev. Spearman.
At least 20 outraged NC NAACP members from across the state filed an Article 10 complaint with the national NAACP about the corrupted election process, only to have Pres./CEO Johnson dismiss it.
On February 7, 2022, Johnson apparently sent a letter out to NC NAACP membership statewide suspending Rev. Spearman, though Spearman says never received the letter.
Rev. Spearman is accusing NAACP Pres./CEO Derrick Johnson of slander for falsely accusing him of misappropriating funds publicly during the 2019 convention in Winston-Salem. He is including Board Chair Russell, and Administrator Sweet-Love in the slander charge for repeating same for the purpose of injuring Rev. Spearman’s reputation to ultimately remove him from office.
Rev. Spearman is seeking compensatory damages against those and six other defendants for four claims of defamation and civil conspiracy in an amount excess of $25,000.00 each and entitled to presumed damages for mental pain and suffering, inconvenience, and loss of enjoyment.
He adds a fifth claim for punitive damages against all defendants , also for over $25,000 each.
Rev. Dr. Spearman has requested a jury trial.
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REPUBLICANS MISLEAD ON
BEASLEY JUDICIAL RECORD
By Cash Michaels
An analysis
It was the playbook employed in their attempt to defeat the presidential nomination of U.S. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Accuse the Black woman Democrat of being soft on crime.
In Judge Brown Jackson’s case, Republican U.S, senators were accusing her of not severely sentencing certain child pornographers to federal terms in prison. A little research showed that in fact, she was astutely following inadequate federal sentencing guidelines in her rulings, not making crass political decisions.
The attempted smear didn’t work then. Judge Brown Jackson will soon become Associate Justice Brown Jackson of the U.S. Supreme Court, the first African-American woman ever to rise to that position in our nation’s history.
But that doesn’t mean that Republican smear playbook has been put away.
Already we’re seeing it again in pointed, though misleading campaign television commercials targeting former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, now the Democratic candidate for US Senate this fall. Beasley faces North Carolina Congressman Ted Budd in the race to succeed the outgoing Republican incumbent Sen. Richard Burr, and the false mud has been flying towards Beasley in a :30 second ad funded by the National Republican Senatorial Committee accusing her of voting on the NC Supreme Court to free a man convicted with 12 counts of child pornography.
According to CBS News, “ Beasley voted with the Democratic majority (of the NC Supreme Court) on a case in 2019 that said police did not have the right to search a USB drive without a warrant (a violation of Fourth Amendment rights), and sent [the case] back to the lower courts. The man, James Howard Terrell Jr., was freed in December 2021.”
The :30 second ad falsely said that Beasley “set free” Terrell, Jr., which wasn’t true. At least eight TV stations in the state rejected the ad as a result, forcing the NRSC to change the line to “Beasley sided with [Terrell]…not the police,” which was arguable worse, but fell in a grey area acceptable to get the deceptive ad back on the air.
A NRSC spokesman promised that there were more negative ads focusing on Cheri Beasley’s judicial record coming, so might as well get ready.
Beyond accusing the NRSC of “lying,” the Beasley campaign has yet to lob a counter-campaign ad offensive against Ted Budd.
“Voters know Cheri worked with law enforcement to hold violent offenders accountable, and she will continue to keep our communities safe as North Carolina’s next U.S. Senator,” a Beasley campaign spokesperson said.
Now there’s focus on Beasley’s judicial record as it relates to the Racial Justice Act. Passed in 2009, the law, signed by “law-and-order” Gov. Bev Perdue, allowed capital convicted murder defendants to have their death sentences commuted to life sentences if they could prove that prosecutors inappropriately used race to convict them.
The law mattered because various studies showed that in North Carolina, white prosecutors were exploiting race when Blacks were put on trial for killing whites. Black jurors were being kicked off juries, race was used in jury selection, white prosecutors were hiding exculpatory evidence just to win convictions, and other schemes were employed to deny black capital crimes defendants fair trials.
The RJA was repealed by the Republican-led NC General Assembly in 2013, primarily because it was a barrier to the return to the death penalty. Therefore, any case Beasley voted for that in any way did not uphold the death penalty in the opinion of Republicans, is considered fair game to use against her to claim that she is “soft on crime” and “can’t be trusted to protect North Carolina families.”
For her part, the Beasley campaign has countered with their Democratic candidate spending her career “upholding the law,” and gaining the respect and support of several sheriffs across the state.
The beauty of this entire episode for the Republican Budd campaign is that it’s the NRSC spending money on attacking Beasley, forcing her campaign to spend funds in defense.
Yes, there is a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, run by the national Democratic Party, and it’s chair, Sen. Gary Peters (D - Mich.) says as to committing funds to the Beasley-Budd race, “We’ll see how it plays out.”
The DSCC’s priority is to make sure incumbent U.S. senators are reelected. But if Beasley seems like she’s in trouble, there should be no question that it should come off the sidelines.
In an effort to blunt the appeal of the Republican crime scare tactic, Beasley has broadened her campaign issues to be more bread and butter, dealing with improving access to affordable health care for the entire family, improving the economy and helping to produce more good paying jobs, and try to reassure North Carolinians that she shares their values.
As the campaigns get closer to November, advertising will become more vigorous. The summertime will be spent trying to raise more money, and attract more unaffiliated supporters, for they will ultimately decide the race if Democrats and Republicans show up at the polls.
The attacks on Beasley will only get worse.
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REV. BARBER’S NAT’L
POOR PEOPLE’S MORAL
MARCH ON WASHINGTON
THIS SATURDAY
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
In the midst of an ever-changing pandemic, and never ceasing inflation, Rev. Dr. William Barber is leading the Poor People’s and Low-Wage Worker’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls,” this Saturday, June 18th, starting at 9:30 a.m., from 3rd Street and Pennsylvania Ave. NW in Washington, D.C..
According to the website, “We assemble and march on June 18, 2022 because any nation that ignores nearly half of its citizens is in a moral, economic and political crisis. There were 140 million people who were poor or one emergency away from economic ruin before the pandemic. Since March 2020, while hundreds of thousands of people have died, millions are on the edge of hunger and eviction, and still without health care or living wages, billionaire wealth has grown by over $2 trillion.”
For more information about the event or attending, just go to https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/june18/mmfaq/.
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