Both sides await fate of NAACP chapter

Jace Radke

Wednesday, April 4, 2001 | 11:05 a.m.

The fate of the Las Vegas branch of the NAACP rests in the hands of three members of the organization's National Board, who will make a recommendation on whether to revoke the branch's charter.

Officials with the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, including the group's president, Gene Collins, spent more than six hours Tuesday answering questions and presenting their cases during two hearings at the Cheyenne campus of the Community College of Southern Nevada.

"I felt we presented ourselves well, and we told the truth," Collins said during a break at the hearings.

The national representatives will make their recommendation to the committee, and a decision on the local branch's future will probably be made at a board of directors' retreat on April 21, said Edward Lewis, Tri-State president for the NAACP branches in Utah, Nevada and Idaho.

"Right now they are just collecting information to take back," Lewis said of the national representatives.

The first hearing was to discuss November's disputed election that Collins won over challenger Lonie Chaney by four votes, 159 to 155. Questions about memberships of some of the voters prompted Chaney to ask for the hearing.

About 50 NAACP members attended the second hearing, in which Collins and four representatives of the Las Vegas branch presented arguments against revoking the group's charter. NAACP member Stan Washington said the local branch would present membership records -- it has about 1,300 members -- as well as records of due payments.

Both meetings were closed to the public, and specific allegations or charges made by the national board members were not disclosed.

The Rev. Chester Richardson, an NAACP member who oversaw November's election and was one of Collins' representatives at the hearings, said he hoped the local branch would not be shut down or placed under the control of the tri-state president.

"This is our branch, and we demand the right to run it," Richardson said. "We're not concerned with a Confederate flag in South Carolina or being disenfranchised in the Florida election. This branch is here to deal with concerns that are germane to Las Vegas."