Benjamin Chavis

On June 24, 2014, Chavis became the president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, an African-American organization which focuses on supporting and advocating for publishers of the nation's more than 230 black newspapers.

Chavis was the president of Education Online Services in Fort Lauderdale, until he retired to accept other opportunities for professional advancement. He serves as the senior strategic advisor to the Diamond Empowerment Fund in New York. In June, 2014, the National Newspaper Publishers Association elected Chavis to the office of president of their two hundred member association.

Chavis worked in the civil rights movement, leading a march in 1970 to the state capital in protest after three white men were acquitted of killing Henry D. Marrow in Oxford. He was a leader of the Wilmington Ten, who all were convicted of arson during a civil rights protest in the city for school desegregation. The oldest at 24, he was sentenced to 34 years in prison and served two years. The convictions and sentences were appealed. In 1980 the federal appeals court overturned the convictions, citing "prosecutorial misconduct." and ordering a new trial. The state of North Carolina decided against a trial. North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue issued “Pardons of innocence” to each member of the Wilmington 10 on December 31, 2012.

On December 31, 2012, Chavis and the surviving members of the Wilmington Ten were granted Pardons of Innocence by North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue. The New York Times editorialized for the pardons of innocence for the Wilmington 10 as the case had become an international cause celebre as an example of virulent racist political prosecution.

Dr. Chavis was a spokesperson for TI's Respect My Vote campaign, and introduced TI's performance at the 2008 FAMU Homecoming Concert in Tallahassee Florida that was hosted by FAMU and Blazin 102.3.

In 2007 Chavis headed H3 Enterprises and the HipHopSodaShop, the first hip-hop corporation that soon opened two shops in Tampa and Miami, Florida. Due to pre-existing conditions, H3 closed the shops, and Dr. Chavis retired. One year later, H3 Enterprises sued Chavis for mismanagement, however an amicable settlement was reached in this case after the routine countersuit of Dr. Chavis.

Chavis performed the Intro and Outro to Jim Jones and the Diplomats 2004 hip-hop album, "On My Way to Church." In 2005, Dr. Chavis was the spoken word artist feature in Cassidy's latest platinum selling album I'm a Hustla. When Dr. Chavis helped organize both the Million Man March (1995) and Million Family March (2000), Russell Simmons worked with him to mobilize hip-hop leaders to support the marches. Ultimately, the two men realized they had a similar vision for this generation of hip-hop youth, and to that end, they created the first national "Hip-Hop Summit" in New York City, from which grew the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network (HSAN).

In 2002, Dr. Chavis and the HSAN joined the United Federation of Teachers and the New York Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) to organize the largest public demonstration since New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office. The Washington Post reported, "Hip-hop's brightest stars, from P. Diddy to Jay-Z to Alicia Keys, lent a little star power today to a demonstration by roughly 100,000 students, teachers and rap fans who crammed eight blocks outside City Hall to protest drastic school budget cuts proposed by the new mayor."

Chavis joined the Nation of Islam in 1997-2000 and temporarily adopted the religious surname Muhammad. Dr. Chavis received the appointment to serve as East Coast Regional Minister of the Nation of Islam and Minister of the historic Mosque Number Seven in Harlem, New York where Malcolm X had served. Theologically, Chavis has worked for decades on identifying the common points of unity between the three Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Today, Chavis continues to work on ecumenical and interfaith matters across the United States and throughout the world.

Chavis later served in 1995 as the National Director of the Million Man March, and the Founder and CEO of the National African American Leadership Summit (NAALS). Since 2001, Chavis has been CEO and Co-Chairman of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, in New York City which he co-founded with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons.

In 1995, NAALS appointed Dr. Chavis to serve as the National Director of the Million Man March Organizing Committee that conceived, designed, arranged and promoted the Million Man March. Dr. Chavis drew upon years of experience as an advocate for African-American equality to help this political march reach its goals of increased political activity and awareness of issues by African Americans.

In 1994, Dr. Chavis set the NAACP's focus on economic empowerment to ensure a strong economic infrastructure for the African-American and other communities of color. The NAACP created a Telecommunications Task Force of Board members and industry leaders to ensure that African Americans took part in the ownership, management, and total employment package of President Clinton's proposed "National Information Superhighway."

Through the NAACP Community Development Resource Centers (CDRC), the Association established the Youth Entrepreneurial Institute to sharpen business acumen and launch enterprises for students ages fourteen to eighteen. In May 1994, Chavis led the NAACP and other organizations in sponsoring a youth summit to seek solutions to the drugs and violence in their communities.

In 1994, Chavis was fired from his position with the NAACP for signing an out-of-court settlement with a NAACP employee without the full NAACP board's approval. Chavis maintained that in his position as NAACP CEO that he had the authority to sign the settlement to protect the NAACP from a meritless civil lawsuit.

In 1994, Dr. Chavis convened summit conferences of civil rights leaders in Baltimore in August and in Chicago in December. In June 1995, they founded the National African American Leadership Summit (NAALS). A constitution and by-laws were adopted that month. Dr. Chavis served as Executive Director and CEO of NAALS from 1995 to 1997. During his tenure, Dr. Chavis directed the organization, planning and implementation of the Million Man March in Washington, DC.

In 1993, the national board of directors of the NAACP elected Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr as the Executive Director and CEO of America's oldest civil rights organization. After leading the NAACP for two years, Dr. Chavis was later fired by the NAACP board over internal organizational legal disputes over staff employment policies and procedures.

In 1993, Dr. Chavis was selected as the Executive Director and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the youngest to hold this office. Dr. Chavis first joined the organization at the age of twelve as a youth leader of the Granville County, North Carolina NAACP Branch.

Chavis traveled to a Los Angeles, CA housing project to "get to the heart of the issue," stating that in economically deprived areas, youth often go from childhood to adulthood with no adolescence because of the economic demands. On August 28, 1993, NAACP Chairman William Gibson, Executive Director Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., Coretta Scott King, William Fauntroy, and AFL-CIO's Lane Kirkland joined together to organize the 30th Anniversary March on Washington for Economic Democracy. In 1993, President Clinton named Dr. Chavis to the twenty-five-member President's Council on Sustainable Development to help develop U.S. policies that would encourage economic growth, job creation, and environmental protection.

The NAACP in 1993 received a $2 million commitment from the estate of the late Reginald F. Lewis to establish the NAACP Reginald F. Lewis Memorial Endowment.

In 1988, Dr. Chavis was elected Vice President of the National Council of Churches. Dr. Chavis also served as chairman of its Prophetic Justice unit as a Minister of the United Church of Christ. In 2013, Dr. Chavis began writing weekly columns for the National Newspaper Association. His columns both insightful and educational, have been published in the country's leading minority newspapers, such as The AFRO.

In 1986 Chavis conducted and published the landmark national study: Toxic Waste and Race in the United States of America, that statistically revealed the correlation between race and the location of toxic waste throughout the United States. Chavis is considered by many environmental grassroots activists to be the "Godfather of the post-modern environmental justice movement" that has steadily grown throughout the nation and world since the early 1980s.

While serving as a mentor to Sister Souljah, Kevin Powell, Little Rob, Ras Baraka and other hip-hop activists, Chavis met Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen in 1986 at Def Jam Records. As head of the NAACP in 1993, he worked with Run DMC to mobilize youth voters. Hip-hop's premier video director, Hype Williams, cast Chavis in the pivotal role as the "Rev. Saviour" in the 1998 hip-hop classic movie Belly, which starred superstar hip-hop artists Nas, Method Man and DMX.

Chavis wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column Civil Rights Journal from 1985 to 1993. At the same time, he produced and hosted a national radio program of the same name.

In 1982, Dr. Chavis was the first person to coined the term environmental racism during environmental justice protests in Warren County, NC. Over the past four decades, Dr. Chavis has emerged as the "Godfather of the Environmental Justice Movement." One account by the Washington Post documented that Benjamin Chavis cried out: "this is environmental racism!" at the moment of his arrest during the 1982 PCB landfill protests in North Carolina. He writes in the forward of a 1993 testimonial of the environmental justice movement:

Chavis received his Master of Divinity (magna cum laude) from Duke University (1980) and a Doctor of Ministry from Howard University (1981). Chavis was admitted into the PhD program in Systematic Theology as a graduate student at Union Theological Seminary of Columbia University and completed all of the academic course requirements in 1984.

Chavis was ordained in the United Church of Christ in 1980 after completing his master's in Divinity. In 1985 he was named the Executive Director and CEO of the UCC-CRJ.

In 1978 Amnesty International described Benjamin Chavis and eight others of the Wilmington Ten still in prison as "American political prisoners" under the definition of the Universal Rights of Man and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They were prisoners of conscience. In December 1980, the Federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new trial and overturned the original conviction because of "prosecutorial misconduct."

Chavis drew from this experience in his books: An American Political Prisoner Appeals for Human Rights (1978) (written while he was still in prison) and Psalms from Prison. In 1978, Chavis was named as one of the first winners of the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award.

Chavis and nine others were arrested in February 1972, charged with conspiracy and arson. Following a controversial trial, all ten were convicted in 1972. The oldest man at age 24, Chavis drew the longest sentence, 34 years. The ten were incarcerated while supporters pursued appeals. The case of the Wilmington Ten was condemned internationally as a political prosecution.

In his youth, Chavis was a youth coordinator and SCLC assistant to Martin Luther King Jr., who inspired him to work in the civil rights movement. At the age of 23, Chavis rose to international prominence in 1971 as the leader of the Wilmington Ten in NC, civil rights activists who were unjustly convicted of committing arson. As the oldest of the ten, Chavis received the longest sentence of 34 years in NC prisons. The Wilmington Ten convictions and sentences were appealed and overturned, and in 1980 all ten were freed by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals due to "prosecutorial misconduct." Chavis returned to graduate school and the field of civil rights, and he became a Vice President of the National Council of Churches in 1988 in New York City.

In 1971 the Commission for Racial Justice assigned Field Officer Chavis to Wilmington, North Carolina to help desegregate the public school system. Since the city had abruptly closed the black high school, laid off its principal and most of its teachers, and distributed the students to other schools, there had been conflicts with white students. The administration did not hear their grievances, and the students organized a boycott to protest for their civil rights.

The journey into the Hip-Hop culture actually had its roots for Chavis dating back to 1969 when he was the proprietor and regular "DJ" and "MC" for The Soul Kitchen Disco in his hometown of Oxford, North Carolina. In the 1970s, Chavis saw the connection between the urban culture of underground music and the post-civil rights era. During the 1980s, Chavis witnessed the growing popularity of hip-hop with disfranchised youth entrapped into urban poverty.

In 1968, Chavis also worked for the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy. After his graduation from UNCC in 1969, Chavis returned to Oxford and taught at the Mary Potter High School, still segregated for African-American students although federal courts had ordered the state to desegregate. In 1970 following the killing of 23-year-old Henry Marrow and the acquittal by an all-white jury of the three men indicted on charges, Chavis organized a protest march from Oxford to North Carolina's State Capitol Building in Raleigh. Following the Oxford to Raleigh march, Chavis organized a black boycott of white businesses in Oxford that lasted for 18 months until the town agreed to integrate its public facilities, including schools.

Chavis was appointed Field Officer in the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice in 1968. (The commission had been established in 1963 to coordinate justice strategies, community organization, and the like.) In 1969, he was appointed Southern Regional Program Director of the 1.7-million-member United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice (UCC-CRJ).

In 1963, while a high school student, Chavis became a statewide youth coordinator in North Carolina for the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He also joined CORE, SNCC and AFSCME.

Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr. was born and grew up in Oxford, North Carolina. In 1960 at the age of twelve, Chavis became the first African American to be issued a library card at the segregated public library. He graduated from Mary Potter High School in 1965 and entered St. Augustine College in Raleigh as a freshman. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (1969).

Dr. Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr. (born January 22, 1948) in Oxford, North Carolina is an African-American civil rights leader and icon, United Church of Christ (UCC) ordained minister, author, journalist, organic chemist, environmentalist, global entrepreneur, and currently President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.