Jury Is Split on Urban League Chief’s 1st Year

Herb Cawthorne sneered through the smoke rising from his cigarette and recalled friends’ bleak forecast of his impact on San Diego politics.

“When I first got here, a lot of people were telling me, ‘You won’t last. They won’t let you last,’ ” said Cawthorne, who observed his first full year as president of the San Diego Urban League last month. “I always thought that was a curious comment . . . “

Cawthorne paused to toy with the phrase.

” ‘They won’t let you last,’ ” he said, his tone awash with irritation. “It was as though black people in San Diego don’t control at least some elements of their . . . own direction.”

They do, he maintained. And, on Aug. 3, 1987, Herb Cawthorne became the compass.

Almost immediately after his arrival, Cawthorne’s provocative comments and penchant for confrontation catapulted him into the spotlight of the black community, making him San Diego’s most visible black leader as well as head of the Urban League.

He stands today as a singular, paradoxical figure in San Diego. On one hand, there is Cawthorne the civil rights firebrand, who called for an economic boycott of San Diego convention business last November.

On the other, there is Cawthorne the nexus, the pragmatic link between San Diego’s black community and the city’s white power structure.

To some, he is a brilliant leader with panoramic vision. To others, he is a charlatan with a concealed, self-serving agenda.

Seated in his office during a recent interview, Cawthorne struggled to define himself and evaluate his first year.

“It’s been a good year for me,” said Cawthorne, dapper in a blue pin-stripe suit and a matching Georgio Armani tie. “I think I’ve grown. I’ve learned a lot about myself. But it’s been a tough year, too.

“I’ve learned how much I’ve learned in my first 40 years. When you make a change, you test yourself. . . . I’ve learned a lot about myself and my strengths and my limits. I’ve also learned more about dealing with people. I’ve learned that people are people no matter where you are.”

Within months of his selection, Cawthorne put himself and the Urban League squarely in the midst of an emotional and much publicized debate.

In November, 1987, he urged blacks to boycott San Diego’s convention trade to protest the vote that returned the name of Martin Luther King Way to Market Street, its original name. The boycott was short-lived; Cawthorne called it off after business leaders promised to raise money for another King memorial.

After the vote that stripped King Way, Cawthorne led a “funeral” procession for the King Way street sign through downtown San Diego.

The sign was rolled along in a gray casket, a symbolic gesture of mourning for the loss of the street name, Cawthorne said.

The battle over the street name and an appropriate King memorial was a turbulent introduction to the city, one that Cawthorne contends he would rather have avoided.

“I did not want to come into San Diego and, within 2 1/2 months say, ‘Hello, San Diego. I’m going to boycott your conventions,’ ” he said. “But I submitted to the needs of this community at that time, and I did it.”

And, despite his professed reluctance to call for the boycott, it become one of many moves that won him the respect of other black leaders.

‘A Good Leader’

“He’s a breath of fresh air,” said Vernon Sukumu, chairman of the Black Federation, a black advocacy group. “He has put some life into the Urban League and has gotten the Urban League involved in the community in a manner we have not seen since John Jacobs was the director. He’s assertive and a good leader.”

“There is a mood in the community that the Urban League has good leadership and will again resume its position of leadership,” said Carroll Waymon, the director of the Southeast San Diego Counseling Center and a member of the Catfish Club. “Over the past four or five years, the Urban League had lost that position in the community as far as the people were concerned.

“Thanks to Herb, that has begun to change.”

It’s the type of change Cawthorne said he expected, the kind he had effected at the Portland branch of the Urban League, where he spent two years as president.

“He was a good administrator, a good person,” said Brenda Pope, the personnel director of the Portland Urban League. “When we found out he was leaving, we were very upset. If he has any flaws as a leader, I didn’t see them. I’ve never heard of any.”

While he was busy rattling those outside the Urban League, he was also shaking up matters within.

League Financial Problems

The most immediate problem Cawthorne faced when he came to San Diego was the financial problems at the Urban League.

“When I got here, I found that the situation was worse than I thought it was,” he said. “Staff morale was bad, was low. Programs were poorly coordinated, although the programs themselves were better than I thought they were.

“The fiscal control, the budgetary control, the programmatic reporting were not sufficient, and we’re still trying to improve all that.”

As part of that improvement effort, Cawthorne initiated a major overhaul of the Urban League, a nonprofit organization designed to prepare blacks for careers in corporate America. He slashed expenditures. He streamlined programs. He fired personnel.

“He just came in and made it his program,” said Lynn Turner, one of six former Urban League employees who filed grievances against Cawthorne earlier this month. “At times, he’s not a leader; he’s a dictator.”

Others are also critical of Cawthorne, though for different reasons.

Battle Over City Growth

“It seems to me his primary objective in this town is to raise as much money as he can for the Urban League,” said Peter Navarro, a University of San Diego assistant economics professor who has debated Cawthorne on the Quality of Life Initiative, which seeks to slow urban growth by establishing strict limits on home building.

Cawthorne has called the measure “a fraud” and claims it would severely limit low-rent housing available to poor blacks. He said Navarro’s support of the plan evinces his insensitivity to blacks.

Navarro, a proponent of the initiative to be voted on in the Nov. 8 elections, has called Cawthorne a sellout.

“He has not really gotten in touch with the grass-roots needs of the black community in Southeast San Diego,” said Navarro, also an economic adviser for the Citizens for Limited Growth. “He seems to be representing the middle-class business community.”

Navarro said that, if Cawthorne is in touch with San Diego’s black community, “then he has totally sold out.”

Last Friday, Cawthorne escalated the argument. In a commentary in the San Diego Union, he said Navarro’s attack on black leaders supporting the initiative contained “the dynamite of racism.”

“Navarro implies, without subtlety,” Cawthorne wrote, “that black people could not know anything about growth and development. . . . Peter Navarro’s dismissal of the possibility that a black mind could differ with him is based on Peter Navarro’s racism, and has nothing to do with the debate.”

Among his most strident critics are the Urban League employees Cawthorne fired.

“I have been extremely disappointed with some of the decisions Mr. Cawthorne has made,” said Rosalind Winstead, one of the six former employees who filed grievances. “I think his agenda is perhaps different from what one might think. It smacks of self-interest.”

Whereas Cawthorne described his style of dealing with people as “aggressive,” Winstead characterized it as “management by intimidation.”

“While I was there,” added Turner, the former Urban League employment training instructor, “we had started a joke around the office that it wasn’t the Urban League anymore. It was the Herb-an League.

“He doesn’t care about other people’s feelings, even on little things. Read all the stories about him. They always talk about how he is smoking and drinking coffee. He doesn’t even ask if his lighting up offends you. He just does it.”

But Cawthorne dismissed the allegations of callousness and egomania, maintaining that he is sincere in his commitment to the Urban League.

“The community wants an Urban League,” he said. “I am just one man.” The community “wants a strong, courageous Urban League. Now, the challenge is: You want an Urban League, you got an Urban League. Now, you have to support it.”

“I basically inherited a program that was facing trouble the last two years of Clarence Pendleton’s tenure,” Cawthorne said of the late Urban League leader. “We were facing bankruptcy. We had too many people and too little cash flow.”

Sukumu, who works closely with the Urban League, echoed Cawthorne’s sentiments.

“Any policies Herb has are certainly preferable to those of Clarence Pendleton,” he said.

Thus, to ease some of the financial hemorrhaging, Cawthorne reduced the Urban League’s staff from 39 to 26. He also postponed some of the employment training programs, and he moved the group data-processing headquarters from downtown to a cheaper office on Market Street.

The cost-cutting measures saved a lot of money, he said. “We couldn’t afford to have that IBM facility down there anyway. Now it’s closer to the people in the community.”

Winstead warned that some of the moves will harm the very people Cawthorne claims to be helping.

“Because (the program) was not infused with his vision,” she said, “because it was not his project, he pretty much dismantled it in no uncertain terms. It may have seemed fiscally responsible, but it was hurting the people in the community, the people it was supposed to help.”

As he was revamping the Urban League, Cawthorne was also devoting energy to matters in the business community.

“I try to engage the business community,” he said. “I try to tear down the barriers that separate the business community and the black community.”

To that end, Cawthorne quickly began establishing ties with city officials and high-ranking officers of many of San Diego’s corporations.

“In terms of the political leaders and the business leaders, I was told many things, good and bad,” he said. “I’ve tried to deal with every person with an open slate and make my judgments from there.”

As a result, Cawthorne said, he has found allies in both the business community and the political hierarchy.

“My relations with the mayor and the City Council are good,” he said. “Maureen O’Connor has very strong support in the black community.”

He described Home Federal Savings & Loan and Great American Savings Bank as “the best corporations, in terms of involvement with the community, that I’ve ever been involved with.”

Many of the corporations also seem pleased to work with Cawthorne.

“I think he is a pretty dynamic guy who has certainly heightened the awareness and visibility of the Urban League,” said Dick Haack, a manager at Home Federal Savings & Loan. “He has made it a vital part of the San Diego community.”

However, Cawthorne said, his inroads into the business community have met with resistance by some financial giants.

And he hinted that some of them may not go unpunished for their opposition.

Donation Irks Group

“The one business that really needs the attention of the black community is San Diego Trust & Savings,” he said. “Through a subsidiary, and in a rather clandestine way, they gave $5,000 to the committee that took away Martin Luther King Way. They’ve done nothing to atone for that grievous misjudgment.”

Cawthorne said neither he nor other members of San Diego’s black community have forgotten the $5,000 contribution.

Officials at the financial institution have said that it was a holding corporation of the bank’s that gave the money.

“We haven’t heard of any problems from Mr. Cawthorne or anyone else,” said Daniel Herde, the chief operating officer at San Diego Trust & Savings Bank.

Cawthorne warned that the silence of the black community on the issue should not be mistaken for contentment.

“If they think that everything is all right because they haven’t gotten a reaction,” Cawthorne said, “then they are taking a serious risk. I won’t say any more than that.”

Some critics don’t believe Cawthorne wields as much influence as he would like to think.

“The profile I get of the guy is that he’s making a lot of noise,” said Navarro. “The more noise he makes, the more money the business community gives him so he will pipe down.”

“I don’t think he has so much influence,” said former Urban League employee Turner. “I think a lot of blacks in the community are afraid to say anything. . . . People are afraid of Herb.”

But Cawthorne insisted that his impact is real, real enough to challenge even forces outside the envelope of San Diego politics.

National Boycott?

“At the Urban League’s national conference in Detroit, I and some other leaders discussed boycotting specific Japanese products,” he said, referring to proposed responses to alleged racism in Japanese politics and businesses. “We are considering it. And, if we did it, we’d do it in 113 different cities. I personally believe we should buy American anyway.”

Still, Cawthorne said, he would rather not resort to retaliatory measures to carve out gains in the corporate world.

“You have to go directly at the business community,” he said. “And, in engaging on a mature, mutually respected level, you can communicate.”

He said his dealings with the business community sometimes fail, but he refused to consider the failures as defeats.

“Success is a continuum,” he said. “It never stops. Defeat is the same way. You can never be defeated. You can have setbacks; you can stumble. No defeat, though.”

No defeat. It is a philosophy that Cawthorne said he has spent his first year trying to disseminate throughout San Diego’s black population, which has been ravaged by drug abuse and crime.

“The mentality of the young people, the hopelessness, the indifference to life and human beings that leads to the drive-by shootings says that we have a sick and horrible situation with our young people,” he said. “What makes a person turn to drugs and that kind of frightening life style versus anything else? It’s because they don’t see enough success around them.”

Cawthorne lambasted those in the public schools who, he said, believe that many of San Diego’s black and Hispanic youths cannot be taught.

“The public school system has an awesome responsibility,” he said. “But it also has all the resources . . . and they say they cannot educate them in their socioeconomic environment. If (the system) cannot educate these kids in their socioeconomic environment, then let’s give the money to schools that can. Let’s create alternative schools. I know I can (teach) ‘em.”

Cawthorne, a former motivational speaker, is well-known for his challenges and often biting criticisms. But each, he said, is selected with great care. The wrong word, a misstatement, any misconstrued show of flippancy, and his impact on San Diego politics could be lost forever.

When he noted this, the name Sylvester Murray was raised.

Murray, the first black city manager in San Diego, was fired in 1986 after telling The Times that he experienced “an orgasm” when he thought about his power as the boss of police.

“He made a fundamental misstatement,” Cawthorne said. “It was a slip of the tongue that, in politics, you pay for.”

But Cawthorne said he wasn’t convinced that the “slip” was all that doomed Murray.

“One way of looking at it says that, no doubt, there may have been prejudice involved,” he said. “But there were also circumstances which may have made it difficult for any strong, aggressive city manager who had been brought in by a former administration . . . to have survived. . . . The dynamics of the city government were changing on him.”

But, because one black political leader was toppled doesn’t mean Cawthorne will shut up, he said.

Admittedly, there is risk in speaking out, but there is also much to gain. Besides, Cawthorne isn’t worrying too much about what he may lose.

He wasn’t supposed to last, anyway.