Nearly two decades after the death of the legendary Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to the U.S. House, a legal battle is being waged in D.C. Superior Court involving a lasting part of her legacy: The nonprofit National Congress of Black Women, co-founded by Chisholm in 1984 to improve the lives of Black women and boost their political aspirations, is racked by infighting and internal allegations of financial improprieties.
“The president has run NCBW for her personal benefit and regards the board [of directors] as an inconvenience to be stonewalled and worked around,” according to a lawsuit filed against E. Faye Williams, who resigned as the group’s president and chief executive after the civil litigation began almost three years ago.
The plaintiffs are a former NCBW treasurer and seven former board members who contend they were improperly ousted by Williams.
They allege that Williams put one of her sisters and two close acquaintances on the organization’s payroll without the board’s permission; did not keep the board apprised of the group’s weakening financial condition; obtained a federal grant and a federal loan totaling nearly $340,000 without the board’s approval; and used NCBW funds for personal expenses.
After the board members learned of Williams’s purported actions and raised red flags, the lawsuit says, Williams moved to oust the women from the nonprofit’s leadership ranks “through a sham election.”
Only a few alleged personal expenditures are specified in the lawsuit, including allegations that Williams used NCBW funds to pay for shoes, manicures and taxes on her condo near D.C.’s Southwest Waterfront. No dollar figures are listed for those alleged expenditures.
Williams, 83, who hosts a podcast called “Wake Up Stay Woke,” said in an interview that she did nothing inappropriate. “I’m an honest person, and I think these women got it wrong,” she said. “All of the money was spent on things that benefited the organization. I put in a lot of my own money and didn’t get paid for many years.”
She said she bought clothing for NCBW members and paid for manicures for donors, including the late actress Cicely Tyson, who Williams said was in Washington for a convention and wanted her nails done. “Everything I did, every money I spent, was on behalf of the members and the organization, not for myself,” she said.
Williams’s attorneys have argued that the lawsuit should be thrown out because she is no longer affiliated with NCBW. But a Superior Court judge ruled last year that part of the case could go forward, examining whether Williams violated her fiduciary duty and should make restitution. The two sides are now in a court-ordered mediation proceeding to determine if a settlement can be reached.
‘I just don’t want to fight with Black women’
The life of Brooklyn-born Chisholm as a Black and feminist icon — a seven-term Democratic congresswoman from New York who ran for president in 1972 — became the subject of a Netflix biopic this month starring Oscar winner Regina King. Meanwhile, the allegations of financial misconduct continue to roil the nonprofit she founded 40 years ago with C. Delores Tucker, a civil rights activist and leader of a 1990s crusade against violent, misogynistic hip-hop lyrics.
At its peak in the early 2000s, shortly before Chisholm’s death, the group had 25 chapters nationwide with more than 5,000 members. Activists from the organization traveled the country, campaigning and raising money for such politicians as Reps. Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee, both California Democrats; Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.); and Carol Moseley Braun, the nation’s first Black female senator.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, NCBW sponsored a Sunday brunch during the annual Congressional Black Caucus Foundation conference, with such luminaries as Maya Angelou, Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Height and Betty Shabazz, to name a few, joining local and national Black elected officials. By then, the group’s ambitions had broadened beyond politics. Members held seminars to train Black women for corporate management positions, launched drives to fight breast cancer and cardiovascular disease, and promoted healthy dieting and exercise programs for Black families.
The number of members and chapters NCBW has now could not be reliably determined. The group’s website has not been updated in recent years, and its acting president and chief executive, Lynn Dymally, did not reply to messages seeking comment on the lawsuit allegations.
The irony of the current infighting and recriminations in NCBW is not lost on Williams or other members, they said, given the organization’s mission of fostering kinship among Black women.
“I just don’t fight with Black women, with all the hell Black women are going through right now,” Williams said. She cited two of former president Donald Trump’s legal adversaries — New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) in Georgia — and Claudine Gay, the first Black president of Harvard, who was pressured into resigning this year amid plagiarism allegations.
“It’s happening all over the country,” said Williams, an ordained minister and long-ago top aide to D.C. Mayor Marion Barry (D). “People are fighting against Black women. We can’t do that to ourselves.”
After Tucker, who headed NCBW, died in 2005 — the same year Chisholm died — Williams became the group’s president and chief executive. Williams told members that it was Tucker’s wish that Williams succeed her as the organization’s leader.
In May 2019, the lawsuit says, Williams “voiced major concerns” to the board about NCBW’s dwindling membership and its “lack of consistent sustainable and adequate financial resources.” This prompted the board to form two committees: a business-planning committee and a fundraising committee.
In a review completed in late 2019, the lawsuit says, the business-planning committee “confirmed the CEO’s concerns and disclosed deep operational problems within NCBW.”
In a March 2020 report, the fundraising committee “found, among other things, that loans were made without the board’s authorization; the President’s sister, a member of NCBW’s D.C. chapter, received $12,000 in compensation over a two-year period; and for a least the past two years, no financial reports were disseminated to the Board on a regular basis, and therefore, no written confirmation of NCBW’s financial status existed,” the lawsuit contends.
The report “made recommendations for policies and best practices,” according to the lawsuit. But it says Williams “took no action to implement the recommendations.”
Almost a year later, in February 2021, NCBW’s treasurer at the time, Ruth I. Gray, “began examining books and records and found, among other things, that [a relative of Williams] … had been given check-signing authority without Board knowledge or approval; that [the relative and one of Williams’s sisters] … were being paid $500 to $600 a month; and that expenditures from NCBW funds included manicures, shoes, health care deductibles and the real estate taxes for the President’s condominium,” the lawsuit asserts.
Gray, who is president of the city council in South Euclid, Ohio, near Cleveland, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
The complaint also alleges that Williams, without the board’s approval, obtained a $199,000 grant from the Agriculture Department, part of which she used to pay salaries to herself as well as a man described as “her protégé” and “other individuals for administering the funds.”
Also, without the board’s authority, the lawsuit says, Williams obtained a $139,000 federal loan from the pandemic Payroll Protection Program (PPP), even though she was “the only full-time staff member whose employment was authorized by the Board or made known to the Board and she works as a contractor, not an employee.”
‘The plan was to straighten everything out’
Williams said that she never spent any of the PPP money and that the funds are still in the group’s bank account. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in the District, which handles D.C.-area fraud cases involving PPP loans, declined to say whether the lawsuit allegations are the subject of a federal investigation.
In the fall of 2021, after the internal reports of financial irregularities, the lawsuit says, Williams “took over the role of Nominating Committee Chair” and scheduled an election of board members, “establishing ad hoc filing requirements for candidates.” It says she “disqualified the plaintiffs in this lawsuit and substituted a slate of her choosing.” The complaint says: “None of the plaintiffs participated” in the election, and Williams’s “handpicked slate” gained control of the board.
The civil case, filed in November 2021, adds that “the President acknowledged paying the real estate taxes on her condominium with NCBW funds but called it a mistake that was rectified when the error was brought to her attention.” Williams subsequently resigned from the group.
“We didn’t mean [Williams] any harm,” said one of the plaintiffs, Jacquelyn D. Jordan, who lost her seat as board vice chairwoman. “When we noticed something was wrong, we asked her to show us what was taking place. The plan was to straighten everything out. And instead of that, we got major pushback, and the final was getting us ousted from the board. When we got pushed off the board, we had no choice other than to file the lawsuit.”
As for Williams, an entrepreneur and Howard University-trained lawyer, she said she hopes the court-ordered mediation will “resolve differences among women leaders who have worked together to build and sustain a potent forum” for the betterment of Black women.
That forum was born around the time of President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide reelection victory over former vice president Walter Mondale (D). In deciding on a running mate that year, Mondale made history by choosing then-Rep. Geraldine Ferraro (D-N.Y.), who became the first female major-party nominee for vice president.
Back then, “there was not a single Black woman out there who could have been considered,” longtime D.C. resident and political firebrand Johnnie Scott Rice said. “And that’s when it was decided” that an advocacy group was needed to elevate Black women in public life.
Chisholm, who had been elected to the House in 1968 and served through 1982, teamed with Tucker, a former Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth, to form what was then called the National Black Women’s Political Caucus. Chisholm was the first chairwoman. Eventually, the group’s name was changed to the National Congress of Black Women to reflect its focus not only on political engagement, but also on education, health care and other issues.
Vice President Harris “is in that White House because of the groundwork laid by our organization,” said Rice, 83, a founding member and a plaintiff in the lawsuit. She has deep roots in District politics, having worked on the staffs of then-D.C. Council members David A. Catania and Carol Schwartz, both of whom took office in 1997, and as a staffer for Sterling Brown, who served as the council’s first chairman in the 1970s after the city gained home rule.
“We are women of strength,” Scott said. “We will continue to carry on as Black women the way Shirley Chisholm and C. Delores had envisioned.”
Said Jordan, the former vice chairwoman, “At the end of the day, the National Congress of Black Women is about the women, the sisterhood and about why it is important to come together. And it still is. That’s what we are doing. We are still on a mission to get it right.”
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
