Another NAACP Branch Rebels : Blacks: Beverly Hills / Hollywood group threatens to picket national leaders. Members say the parent organization is trying to destroy the entertainment industry’s local office.

In what could become the second embarrassing internal split within the NAACP in less than two months, members of the Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch are threatening to picket their national leaders this week when they arrive in town to release a new study on the plight of blacks in the entertainment industry.

Disgruntled local members of the civil rights organization are accusing the national board of suppressing a similar study conducted by the branch last year. Then, they charge, the national leadership deprived the local group of its major source of income by seizing control of the Image Awards, a high-profile, nationally broadcast awards program that the branch founded 23 years ago.

Now, the local activists contend, the national leaders plan to open a new NAACP office in Hollywood that would take over one of the branch’s major activities--negotiating with studios for better conditions for blacks in film and television--and effectively put the branch out of business.

“It’s a very painful discussion,” said Sandra Evers-Manly, president of the 3,000-member Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch, one of the largest in the country. “But how can they talk about justice in Hollywood when there is no justice in the NAACP?”

Evers-Manly said she will boycott a news conference the national officers have scheduled for Monday morning at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to announce their study. Others who spoke out on the issue at a packed meeting Friday night in the Mid-City area said they would be there to picket or otherwise demonstrate against the national board.

“Most people feel like we should go out kicking and scratching,” said Evers-Manly. “The Image Awards are lost and now we’re fighting for the survival of the branch.”

In an interview Saturday, John Mance, a Los Angeles-based member of the national board, said he knew nothing of a plan to open a new NAACP office in Hollywood. He referred questions about that to the board’s chairman, Dr. William F. Gibson. Gibson could not be reached for comment.

Mance acknowledged, however, that the organization is considering merging the Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch with the Los Angeles branch or dissolving it--but only, he contended, in the interest of streamlining NAACP activities in the area.

While a decision on that point is being made, Mance said, he has recommended that the branch be kept under a 2-year-old administration by the national board because its members continue to be “rebellious.” The branch is otherwise well-run with “excellent” programs, he said.

Mance, who was named in 1989 to administer the branch after a dispute involving a former branch president, said the Image Awards will remain under the national leadership’s control unless the branch wins a lawsuit over the matter.

But if the local group files a lawsuit, as some members have threatened, and loses it, he warned, “they’ve lost everything. There will be no Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch. I guarantee you that.”

Some of the branch officials, he said, are naive about how the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People operates and responded to him with flippant remarks when he suggested in June that they undergo training in the organization’s procedures.

Branch members, however, contend the national leaders are interested only in the prestige that comes with having a high profile in Hollywood and the revenue generated by the Image Awards.

The awards program, which recognizes entertainment personalities and organizations that project positive images of blacks, was a volunteer-produced fund-raiser for the branch that financed year-round programs, said Evers-Manly.

It generated from $30,000 to $60,000 annually, she said, half of which the branch had to share with the NAACP’s national office.

The most recent program--the last hosted by the branch--lost money, she said, because the national office took a large chunk of the $100,000 that had been given to the branch to produce the program for prime-time television, plus $37,000 in tickets for which the branch was never reimbursed.

“We hope the entertainers will boycott the Image Awards” if the national office insists on running the program in the future, said Maggie Hathaway, who is credited with co-founding the Beverly Hills/Hollywood branch in 1962 along with Sammy Davis Jr.

The very public rift is the second in recent weeks involving an NAACP branch in Southern California and the organization’s national leaders.

Last month, the Compton NAACP branch refused a demand by officials in the organization’s national office to rescind its endorsement of Clarence Thomas, President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court. The Compton branch was given 24 hours to make the retraction or face the possible loss of its charter.

After national publicity about that split--including criticism from Bush--the national leaders backed down.