Rev. Gatewood suspended by NAACP amid sexual harassment allegations
The national NAACP revoked the membership Thursday of one of its prominent North Carolina members amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
The national organization posted a statement on its website Thursday, saying it had notified Rev. Curtis Gatewood that his membership is “immediately suspended pending a hearing.”
“As a more than 110-year-old organization dedicated to equality of rights for all persons, the NAACP takes all allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct seriously,” the statement said.
Wednesday, the Rev. William Barber and a group of supporters and nearly a dozen others gathered for a news conference at a Raleigh hotel in support of a woman who complained she was sexually harassed by Gatewood in 2017 when she worked with him at the N.C. NAACP.
At the time of the incidents, Barber was president of the state organization, and he ordered an outside investigation into Jazmyne Childs’s allegations. An employment lawyer who conducted the investigation found Childs’s claims believable.
“This sister, this young lady, is telling the truth,” Barber said at the news conference, during which he chided NAACP members who have openly doubted Childs’s claims or said on social media that the claims were politically motivated.
Gatewood resigned from the N.C. NAACP as the investigation was underway. Now, according to his Facebook page, Gatewood is a candidate for president of the state organization. The election is scheduled for Oct. 5, the last day of the 2019 state NAACP convention, to be held in Winston-Salem.
Thursday, the NAACP said Gatewood is now ineligible to run for office “unless his membership is restored.”
Gatewood, who had been a member of the Alamance County NAACP, wrote in a text message Thursday to The Associated Press that he will seek a hearing on his suspension. The letter to Gatewood says he has 20 calendar days to request a hearing.
“The allegations are totally false,” Gatewood wrote, according to The Associated Press. He blamed the Barber for the timing of the harassment claims with the upcoming election, The AP reported.
“His actions are those more of Judas than Jesus,” Gatewood wrote of Barber. “He had already committed crucifixion in 2017. Now here he is in 2019 trying to stop God’s miraculous resurrection. But what God has for me; He has for me.”
An attorney for Childs said she didn’t have a statement Thursday night, The AP reported.
Allegations detailed
Childs said she thought she had landed her dream job as Youth and College Division Field Secretary for the state chapter of the vaunted civil rights organization in early 2017. But according to the report by April Dawson, the lawyer who investigated Childs’s complaint, Childs was told shortly after she was hired to avoid being alone with Gatewood.
At the time, Gatewood helped organize events for the group, including some of the large public demonstrations in downtown Raleigh protesting actions by the N.C. General Assembly.
Gatewood, a pastor, is former head of the Durham branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a longtime Civil Rights activist. A decade ago, he was second vice president of the N.C. NAACP.
Childs said that in February 2017, shortly after she started work, she and a coworker were making copies in a room at the NAACP office when Gatewood leaned into the room and asked her to come to his office for a private meeting. The coworker, she said, cautioned her about being alone with him and suggested she record the meeting. She did so.
Childs told the investigator that Gatewood closed the door and asked her some work-related questions but kept staring at her groin area, which she found embarrassing and uncomfortable.
In another incident, Childs said, she was out sick with the flu and Gatewood looked in her personnel file to get her personal cell phone number. He called her, she said, and spoke in a seductive voice, telling her if she needed anything she could count on him.
The most egregious incident happened in May 2017, she said, when she was helping to prepare for a coworker’s going-away party in a room at the NAACP office. The lights were dimmed in the room as the party was to be a surprise, and as Childs was arranging food on a table, she said, she felt breath on her neck. It was Gatewood, she said, and he pressed his penis against her buttocks.
Childs said she shouted at Gatewood and he moved away, went out of the room and left the building for a time before returning after the party was underway.
Childs said the incident caused her to feel “violated, ashamed and scared.”
In her investigation, Dawson, the lawyer, interviewed other employees as well as Gatewood and found Childs’s complaints to be credible.
Dawson said in her report that Gatewood denied some of the alleged incidents and said he did not remember others.
More recently, Gatewood had been presenting himself as head of the Alamance County NAACP branch. In February of this year, Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the national NAACP, sent Gatewood a cease-and-desist order telling him that because he was not a member in good standing of that chapter, he was not eligible to serve as its president and must stop claiming that he was.
Barber said that under NAACP rules, only the national organization can revoke or suspend a membership, and he said it should do so with Gatewood and bar him from running for office in the state chapter, to protect the organization and the women who work for it.
The current president of the N.C. NAACP is Rev. Anthony Spearman, who is seeking re-election. Spearman said in text message to The News & Observer Wednesday that he admires Childs’s courage and supports her.
Johnson, the national leader, could not immediately be reached for a response.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
This story was originally published September 25, 2019 at 6:55 PM.
