Naacp Puts Texaco Stock In Its Sights

The NAACP will launch a campaign to sell off Texaco stock if the oil company doesn’t reach “a swift agreement” to improve its racial climate, the civil rights group’s leader said Thursday.

Kweisi Mfume, the NAACP’s president and chief executive officer, also called for an immediate settlement of Texaco’s a $520 million race discrimination lawsuit filed by black employees.

“If a swift agreement is not reached and Texaco is unwilling to address the root causes of the problems there, we will work with our broad-based coalition to target Texaco’s stock,” he said.

Texaco representatives did not answer calls to company headquarters Thursday evening. Company executives are accused of using racial slurs against blacks in a secretly recorded 1994 conversation about evidence in the suit.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson first called for a stock divestiture, after a meeting Tuesday at company headquarters with Texaco Chairman Peter Bijur. Jackson also called for an immediate boycott of Texaco gasoline and services, and said picketing would begin at Texaco gas stations Saturday unless the lawsuit was settled before then.

Mfume, who also met Tuesday with Bijur, did not call for a boycott. Instead, he said he got assurances the company would report back in 30 days to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on steps it would take to improve Texaco’s racial climate.