In April 2002 I was asked to write a profile of Carl Madison, the well-known and sometimes controversial leader of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP. Carl has since moved to Ohio, but he still keeps up on race issues in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.

No apologies / Criticism part of local NAACP head Madison’s job
Sunday, April 14, 2002

Civil rights activist Dick Gregory once said that when black people need help, they call on two things – Jesus Christ and the NAACP.

In Springfield, when people call on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, they get Carl Madison.

For the last five years, Madison, 37, has led the local chapter and brought attention to a variety of issues, including alleged gender bias in the fire department, alleged racial discrimination in the police department, alternative education for expelled students and recruitment of more minority teachers for Springfield schools.

It’s a job that has brought both challenges and criticism, enough so that Madison jokes that’s the reason he went out and bought a golden retriever puppy, to make sure he had a friend.

“It’s had its ups and downs. Everybody says being branch president is a tough job,” Madison says, sliding open his patio door to let 8-month-old Max into the yard for an afternoon romp.

When he began as NAACP president, Madison received two or three calls a day from people seeking help. He estimates he now receives about 25.

Some are from victims of discrimination. Others have been taken advantage of. Some want help keeping their kids in school. A few don’t know where else to turn.

Among them was Shirley Jones-Gooden, who rang Madison’s doorbell at home to see if he could find out why her son, Bennie Lee Jones, died after falling and apparently hitting his head at the Sangamon County Jail on Feb. 14.

“Carl was home and I went in and explained the situation,” she recalls.

“He was with me every step of the way, all the way through it. I don’t think the family could have endured this alone,” she says. “He was very supportive. He would visit at the hospital with me. He shed tears. He was emotional, just like it touched him as much as it did the family. He went the whole nine yards.”

While Madison has won many supporters with his efforts, he has also been a lightning rod for criticism at times, as reflected in letters to the editor of The State Journal-Register over the last year:

“In regards to Carl Madison’s statement that the NAACP would ‘roll its sleeves up and address the issue of a retest’ on the Springfield Fire Department’s agility test: Please keep rolling until they cover your mouth, Carl. We’re sick of listening to you whine.”

“It was no surprise to see Carl Madison on the front page asking for yet another handout.”

“I see Carl Madison is at it again. Wake up, Carl!”

Such criticism is part of the job, Madison says, making no apologies for who he is or what he does.

“A lot of times what people do is take it personally. It’s never personal. It’s just business. I mean, what’s the expectation? I don’t know what citizens expect. I’m the NAACP president,” he says.

“They should know when I address issues they’re going to be about civil rights, they’re going to be about equality and fairness, they’re going to be about discrimination. … If I’m addressing those, I’m doing my job.”

Rudy Davenport, a longtime member of the NAACP, says Madison’s greatest strength is that he knows the issues – often before they become issues.

“There is some cost to acting upon these things. They take their toll. There is criticism and a lot of other things. One thing about being in front like him, you sort of live in a fishbowl. You’re always visible – your good and your bad. I don’t know if many of us could take that.”

Growing up on the east side 30 years ago was the best time of his life, Madison says. His father, McClinton Madison, was a World War II veteran who worked as a welder at Fiatallis for 34 years before passing away on Thanksgiving Day in 1993.

McClinton built a house on 18th Street for his wife, Barbara, and his five children. He also built a hairdresser shop inside the home, allowing Barbara to work and be at home for Carl and his brothers and sisters.

Looking back, Madison says, there was less crime in his neighborhood when he was growing up. He also cannot recollect ever experiencing racial discrimination when he was a youngster.

“It’s after you become an adult and live here. It’s completely different from growing up here,” he said.

He attended Griffin High School for two years, then transferred to Calvary Academy, graduating in 1982 with the school’s first graduating class. He was a high school athlete, which is how he met his wife, Mia.

“She’s my high school sweetheart,” Madison says. “She went to Lanphier, and she was a pompom girl. I played basketball for Calvary.”

The two have been married 17 years, with 14-year-old twins, Carl Jr. and Chelsea, born while Madison was serving a six-year stint overseas in the Air Force. Madison also has a 7-year-old daughter from another relationship.

Family time, he says, usually consists of gathering in their home on Capitol Avenue for nights of pizza and videos. They also enjoy weekend trips to Chicago, where one of Madison’s brothers lives.

While his father had a great influence on him, he says his life has been most influenced by the man who baptized him – the Rev. Rudolph Schoultz, pastor at Union Baptist Church, where the Madison family attends services. Schoultz, who died in 2000, was known throughout Springfield for his political activism.

“We were very close, and we became even closer after my father passed,” Madison says.

“If you see me out here addressing the hard issues, you can probably either thank or fault Rev. Schoultz because he was that type of person. He addressed the hard issues and so I’m kind of, when it comes to addressing issues, I feel I’m probably an extension of what he would want to see me doing.”

Charlie Houghland, owner of Family Video, also had an influence on Madison, he says, by giving him his first job selling coffee in downtown Chicago after he got out of the Air Force.

“For the most part, I was in a suit jacket every day and meeting with people in Chicago, making coffee sales in the entire Amoco building and things of that nature,” he says. “Those are huge accounts, so you have to have a certain business savvy about yourself.”

The pressures of city life took their toll, however, and Madison moved back to Springfield. He began a series of factory jobs, working at A.E. Staley Manufacturing in Decatur, then for Cargill in Springfield. He eventually became a corporate supervisor for Bridgestone/Firestone in Decatur – a job that ended earlier this year when the plant closed.

Madison has traded his employee handbook for college textbooks.

When the plant closed, he decided to go back to school, enrolling at Illinois State University. Though he already has a two-year degree in business administration, he decided to pursue a bachelor’s in political science.

His studies could come in handy soon, as Madison admits he is giving serious consideration to a run for local office and may make an official announcement of his intentions by the end of the year. He declined to reveal his political party.

“I’m considering making a bid. I won’t say what for, but I’m considering getting into local politics this year,” he says. “It’s one thing to be on the sidelines and saying when things are wrong. I believe those who are on the sidelines should become a part of the process and make the changes they feel necessary.”

Word of Madison’s possible run for office has not been embraced by everyone. T.C. Christian, publisher of Pure-News USA, a local publication that targets primarily African-American readers, has said publicly that he believes Madison is using his role as NAACP president as a springboard into politics.

In a March editorial, Christian wrote the NAACP “needs a designated driver,” a reference to Madison’s January 2001 drunken driving arrest, to which he pleaded no contest.

In addition, the Black Guardians Association, which represents black Springfield police officers, has stated in a letter to Madison that his assistance to them has been “counterproductive, highly suspect and apparently self-serving.”

Madison denies the accusations, maintaining that he and the NAACP have honorable intentions and that his role with the NAACP will not conflict with a political career because he would have to give up one to pursue the other.

“If I decide to choose to run for a political office, I know clearly that I can’t hold a political office and be branch president at the same time. The bylaws won’t allow that,” Madison says.

Davenport says it is not unheard of for NAACP members to pursue careers in politics.

“I think if that’s what his inclination is, God bless him and power to him. We don’t have enough young people with Carl’s knowledge and his savvy to go into politics,” he says.

Brian McFadden, chief of staff for Mayor Karen Hasara, says it is common for people with political aspirations to have worked with community organizations first.

“If you look around the faces on the city council, there’s a lot of them that came out of community involvement, whether it’s neighborhood organizations, civic groups or athletics,” he says. “I don’t think it’s fair to criticize someone for that.”

In the meantime, Madison says he will continue to focus on issues facing the NAACP, including firefighter testing, conflicts within the police department, the organization’s alternative school for students who have been expelled and the creation of a legal defense corporation for Springfield area residents who need legal representation.

Madison says that before he joined the military, he never would have guessed he’d one day be back in Springfield, aggressively leading a civil rights organization.

It was a chance visit to a concentration camp in Germany, where he was stationed, that made him think seriously about addressing inequalities among people.

“When I saw that, it had an impact on me. I just realized how hate impacted the lives of the Jewish community,” he says. “I was only 19 years old. At that point, I knew I wanted to address some inequalities at some point in my life.”

It was during that time, too, that Madison learned about the Springfield race riots of 1908. The two days of riots left two whites and four blacks dead as well as 40 black-owned homes and 15 black-owned businesses destroyed. Outrage over the incident led to formation of the NAACP.

When Madison returned to Springfield, he got involved with an organization called Monument 1908, which successfully saw to it that a memorial was erected to the victims of the riots.

Madison eventually was approached by members of the Springfield NAACP chapter’s nominating committee.

“He wanted to be in a leadership position for the right reasons. It wasn’t for any self-promotion. He just had a willingness and an eagerness to do some community work,” Davenport says. “He was working in a factory in Decatur at the time. I thought that was something very unusual and a good quality. He really impressed me as someone who knew how to do the hard work and get their fingernails dirty, yet still knew what the problems of the working community were.”

Madison became president of the local chapter in December 1996. In 1997, at 32, he was honored as the youngest NAACP branch president in the Midwest.

His first order of business as president was to set a course for the organization to become more aggressive and visible. While specific membership numbers are not made public, the local chapter has hundreds of members, according to Mary Daniels, the membership chairwoman. That’s up 20 percent in the last year, Madison said.

While some of the issues, such as minority hiring in the police department, go back many years, “we’ve really gone in a different direction,” he said.

Madison is pleased the people who call him for help come from diverse backgrounds, both racially and economically.

“The NAACP must now stand in this century for people of all colors. That’s what we have to stand for because people of all colors get discriminated against,” he says. “I don’t know if the citizens of Springfield are realizing what we’re doing, but we crossed that racial line many times in my leadership.

“Look at it this way, I’m a person who likes to get things done, and I think the weakness that I have is the inability to make change happen faster. I’m not afraid to pull the trigger when I need to, and that trigger is litigation. .. .There’s only so much talking, only so much negotiation that you can do before you get into meetings on the meetings, agendas on the agendas and that sort of thing.

“I don’t mind talking, but I like to talk and I like to see action after.”

McFadden, the mayor’s top aide, attended Griffin High School with Madison for a while. The two find themselves talking at least weekly about issues that often are controversial.

“It’s a little different because it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that you were in gym class and working on chemistry experiments, and now you’re dealing with much more serious issues,” McFadden says.

“The relationship’s professional and the meetings are always good meetings in the sense that they never get out of hand. .. . Carl usually makes his point, and we make our point.”

If Madison has a weakness, McFadden says, it’s that he takes on too many problems instead of being more selective or delegating them to other people.

“The key to jobs like these are you can’t fight everybody. You’ve got to prioritize things. Sometimes it looks like he’s all over the board and sometimes picks the wrong fight,” McFadden says. “I think sometimes that hurts the organization in the sense that some people may wonder what’s really going on.”

Davenport says Madison has a natural interest in helping everyone on his own, which sometimes can work against him.

“I think that if I could give him some friendly advice, that’s what I would advise him to do – use more of the organization to do things for him. I’ve seen him just exhausted by trying to do everything,” he says. “To me, I see it as a weakness because in the long run he’s going to be run down, I think, before his time. He has to learn how to take it easy and how to delegate.”

For all the local chapter’s hard work and dedication, Madison speculates there likely will never be a day when the Springfield NAACP can conclude that its work is done here.

“Currently, the branch is so strong that we can take on any issue in the city of Springfield. With all the issues in the city, you’ve got to have a strong organization. You have other organizations, but the pure and simple fact is we’re the biggest and baddest on the block when it comes to dealing with civil rights issues and inequalities,” he says.

“But if we take a look at the societal aspect of our city, we’re light years from where we ought to be. I’d like to see, in my vision, where I’d be able to put the NAACP out of vision. I think that is the ultimate vision.”