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Persona non-grata: Judge Jane Matilda Bolin and the NAACP, 1930-1950
Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, Jan, 2005 by Jacqueline A. McLeod
Never willing to turn a blind eye to Board misconduct, Bolin's tenure as a member of the Board soon became oppositional. "I could not sanction the paid staff overwhelming the Board to the extent of usurping the Board's function of making policy," she wrote to Arthur Spingarn in 1950. "Nor could I condone the practice of Executive Secretary, as revealed by a member of the Board, calling together in advance of a Board meeting a secret gathering of a selected few Board members to inform them what would be on the agenda at the Board meeting and what action he wanted the Board to take." (23) This oppositional positioning soon made her "persona non-grata" to the NAACP hierarchy. In 1949, after serving twelve years on the Executive Committee of the New York Branch and five years on the National Board of Directors, Bolin was summarily dropped as a Board member. In what appears to have been a very contentious Committee meeting, three members voted for Bolin's re-nomination to the Board and three voted against her re-nomination with the Chairman of the Nominating Committee, Dr. J. L. Leach, breaking the tie. By a four to three decision, the Nominating Committee voted not to re-nominate Bolin, later citing as its reason the over-representation of the New York Branch on the Board. According to Leach, it was his thinking and the thinking of the majority of the Committee members that in an effort to strengthen the forces of the NAACP "an effort should be made to spread out and extend to other areas some of the places on the National Board, and, in as much as New York holds the largest majority of members on the Board and with no ideas to engage in any New York squabble or controversy" Judge Bolin was not re-nominated but was recommended and selected for a vice-presidency. (24)
At the time of the Nominating Committee's decision to not re-nominate Bolin, she was one of fourteen New York Branch members who were also National Board members. Most of the other cities that were represented on the National Board had one member each, with Washington, D. C. and Chicago having four and two Board members respectively. Alfred Baker Lewis, another member of the Nominating Committee, also felt that the New York Branch was overrepresented on the National Board. In a letter to an inquiring Branch President from West Virginia, he stated that the consensus in the Association was for increased Board representation of areas outside of New York, "in view of the great growth in membership, principally outside of New York" and that to effect "this rather general desire it was necessary to leave out at least some of the New York members." (25) To this end the Nominating Committee agreed on five replacements after consideration of the sixteen Board members whose terms expired, and the five new nominations for Board membership in 1949 represented branches outside of New York, specifically Charlotte, North Carolina, Washington, D. C., Savannah, Georgia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Kansas City, Missouri. (26)
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