SANTA FE – The head of the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs has resigned.
Executive Director William Scott Carreathers didn’t provide a reason for his immediate resignation when making the announcement in a letter to an official in Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office. He said only that he was proud to have served in the position since being appointed by the Democratic governor when she began her first term in 2019.
Carreathers’ move comes after the governor’s recent announcement that she was forming a Council for Racial Justice in response to protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis last month.
State Rep. Sheryl Williams Stapleton of Albuquerque, a member of the new council, told the Santa Fe New Mexican she believes Carreathers’ resignation was a result of miscommunication that somehow he was not informed about the council.
“It just doesn’t make sense that it has happened at a critical time like this,” she said.
There also has been ongoing frustration among New Mexico’s black community about the role of the Office of African American Affairs, along with budgetary and salary discrepancies between it and other state agencies, said David Cooper, the leader of a regional group of African American ministers.
Cooper, a bishop at New Hope Full Gospel Baptist Church in Albuquerque and president of the Minister’s Fellowship of Albuquerque and Vicinity, said attempts to elevate the office into a Cabinet-level agency have been stymied under several governors, including Lujan Grisham.
“For the most part, the community feels devalued by state government,” he told the Albuquerque Journal.
Cooper said he was disheartened because Carreathers was considered an ally to the community.
“Part of what we’re marching about right now is not having a seat at the table,” Cooper said.
Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the governor’s office was in contact with the Office of African American Affairs the day it announced the new council and that “the intent was and remains for that office to, of course, play a role on that council going forward.”
Sackett said the governor hopes to hire a “dynamic new director” in the near future given the importance of the office. She did not say who would be in charge during the search for Carreathers’ successor.
Sackett also said the governor is still finalizing the names of those who will serve on the council. So far, the panel will include Stapleton, the Rev. Anna Maria Davis of Grant Chapel AME Church in Albuquerque; and Alexandria Taylor, director of sexual assault services at the Albuquerque-based New Mexico Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs.
Stapleton said the council likely will set up public meetings and town halls to find out “what New Mexicans want to see in terms of policies” that will ensure black citizens have a voice and are protected.
Stapleton, a state lawmaker since the mid-1990s, played a role in the creation of the Office of African American Affairs under the Republican administration of former Gov. Gary Johnson in 1999.
