* In 1998, Mfume was a signatory to a public letter addressed to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, declaring that “the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself.” Other signers included Tammy Baldwin, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Morton H. Halperin, Peter Lewis, George Soros, and Cornel West.

* Also in 1998, Mfume lent his name to the Statement of Principlesof the New Century Alliance for Social Security, a coalition of groups — spearheaded by Institute for America’s Future — that opposed the partial privatization of Social Security. Other signers included Brent Blackwelder, Heather Booth, Nancy Duff Campbell, Marian Wright Edelman, Mike Farrell, Roger Hickey, Patricia Ireland, Jesse Jackson, Steven Kest, Norman Lear, Robert Reich, Susan Shaer, Eleanor Smeal, Andrew Stern, John Sweeney, and Raul Yzaguirre.

* In February 2005, Mfume joined entertainer Harry Belafonte, former President Bill Clinton, movie director Spike Lee, and Marxist professor Cornel West in eulogizing the deceased African American actor and political activist Ossie Davis.

* In April 2005 Mfume found himself embroiled in scandal when the Associated Press reported that according to a confidential NAACP memo, he had given raises and promotions to female employees with whom he had engaged in sexual relations during his tenure as the organization’s president. In May 2005, Mfume acknowledged an affair he had had with a female staffer, calling it a “boneheaded” mistake that lasted only briefly.

* In 2008 Mfume served on the board of directors of American Rights at Work, a group that advocates for workers’ right to unionize without interference.

* A vocal critic of what he described as the “illegal” Iraq War, Mfume accused the George W. Bush administration of “deliberately” and “maliciously” lying to the American public about the urgency of deposing Saddam Hussein. He also claimed that the Patriot Act had caused “thousands of individuals [to be] denied their basic civil rights.”

* Mfume has been a member of: the Board of Visitors of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, the Advisory Board of the Schomburg Commission, the Meyerhoff Scholars Advisory Board of the University of Maryland, the Senior Advisory Committee of the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees, the National Advisory Council of Boy Scouts of America, the Gamma Boule Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Masons, and the Big Brothers and Big Sisters.