“You are directed to cease and desist immediately from holding yourself out as president of the St. Louis County Branch of the NAACP,” NAACP President and Chief Executive Officer Derrick Johnson wrote to John Gaskin III on Thursday, April 25.
Johnson’s order came in the aftermath of Gaskin’s overwhelming public rejection for announcing the County NAACP’s endorsement of Better Together’s ballot initiative to merge St. Louis city and government – without disclosing he was a paid advocate for that position, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch got Gaskin to confirm.
However, Johnson first upbraided Gaskin for endorsing state legislation that would amend Title IX law in Missouri – a change that would, Johnson wrote, “make it more difficult for survivors of sexual assault at Missouri’s state universities to come forward with their claims and have them adjudicated.”
Johnson wrote that Gaskin’s position on this legislation “conflicts with NAACP policy regarding implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendment Act of 1972 and its supporting regulations, which is reflected most recently in the NAACP’s January 2019 opposition to proposed rule changes at the federal level that would have largely the same effects as the proposed Missouri legislation.”
Johnson also chastised Gaskin for taking “this position without having consulted with the leadership of the Missouri State Conference or other units in the state, despite the fact that the proposed legislation would apply to all public universities,” and “without having obtained authorization or ratification of your actions from the branch’s Executive Committee, in apparent violation of the NAACP’s Bylaws for Units.”
Separately and more briefly, he noted that Gaskin had endorsed the Better Together proposal without disclosing that he had “accepted a paid position from an outside entity to advocate in support of the merger” until he was “confronted by a newspaper reporter following a press conference announcing your support of the merger.”
Johnson said that these actions present “a danger of irreparable harm to the association and the St. Louis County Branch” and “immediate action is necessary to mitigate that harm.” For that reason he suspended Gaskin as branch president “effective immediately, pending further action by the NAACP Board of Directors.”
Johnson said Gaskin had “20 calendar days from the postmark on the envelope containing this letter” (April 25) to request a hearing and to provide any written response to the allegations. He told Gaskin he had only one week to turn over to branch 1st Vice President John Bowman “all branch records, keys and security codes for all NAACP property, all computer identification names and passwords, and all information regarding social media accounts used by or in the name of the branch.”
Gaskin did not return a request for comment from The American.
Gaskin was appointed president on November 9 when he was 26 years old. “As a lifelong NAACPer,” he stated then, “I understand deeply that the work of the organization is done in the field at a grass roots level. I look forward to building coalitions and working more regionally with other groups that want to move our civil rights agenda forward.”
