When Sidmel Estes-Sumpter became president in 1991, it seemed improbable that it had taken so long for NABJ to elect a woman leader.  Women had always held important positions on the national board and in local chapters, and they comprised 60 percent of NABJ's membership.

The door was bound to open eventually. But Estes-Sumpter, an outspoken southern broadcaster, didn't just open it, she smashed it open.

"With Sidmel, it was what you see is what you get. There was no middle  ground with her. She is very bodacious," said Wayne Dawkins, associate editor at The Daily Press in Hampton Roads, Va., and a former Region II director.

"She took no prisoners," said current Vice President-Broadcast Condace  Pressley. "If you didn't do what you were supposed to do, she would get in your face and tell you about it. But you weren't mad about it. It may have frustrated you, but it also challenged you."

Watching Estes-Sumpter, at least on this cloudy day in Atlanta, it is hard to separate the legend from the person. The only thing she worries about is getting home. Her sons, Joshua, 11, and Sidney, 6, are in  baseball tournaments and she must be there. Her husband, Garnett Sumpter, who is also a coach, is stressed as he tries to fill out the lineup card.  She is calm, though there's no telling what would happen if the umpire blows a call.

Estes-Sumpter, 45, laughs about her image as president.

"As I have grown older I have learned enough to temper my  aggressiveness," said the executive producer for "Good Day Atlanta" on Fox  5 Atlanta. "But I am sure I pissed off a lot of people along the way."

Her roots in NABJ date back to joining the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists in 1982.

"But I wasn't involved in it much," she admitted. "At the time, it was a group that would get together for a happy hour. I saw it as more of a  social organization than a professional one."

Her opinion changed two years later when Atlanta hosted the national convention.

"I consider 1984 a milestone. It took us to national prominence," she said. "That was the point where I said I have got to do more to make a  difference in this industry."

She jumped back into the local chapter, serving as vice president, then  president, and then four years as NABJ Region V director.

The national presidency was the next logical step.

"Having served on the board, I said who is gonna continue to serve and  give guidance? There have been so many good men, and I stress men, who have led this organization. I figured I could do it. I knew that I had worked hard for the organization and had a proven track record. I felt my  track record was enough for me to be elected."

Estes-Sumpter was only the second woman to seek NABJ's top job in its 16-year history. Thomas Morgan III had beaten Ruth Allen Ollison, a  television news executive in Dallas-Fort Worth, in 1989.

"For me, it wasn't an issue," Estes-Sumpter said. "I never ran because  I wanted to be the first woman president. It was an afterthought."

Her candidacy became a rally cry for many, but she also met resistance on all fronts, based on professional and personal stereotypes. For one, although she didn't embrace it as a campaign slogan, she was a woman and faced jealously and male chauvinism.

"I didn't see anything overt," said Dawkins, author of "Black  Journalists: The NABJ Story." "Some of the older men may have grumbled to themselves. But they knew if they were going to mess with her, they were  going to suffer the consequences."

Estes-Sumpter was reared in the South; most of the other NABJ presidents had hailed from the Northeast. She was a broadcaster; most of the other presidents were in print. At the time only a third of NABJ's  membership was in broadcasting.

"I didn't know how difficult the election would be," said  Estes-Sumpter, whose opponent, Roy Johnson of Sports Illustrated, was well-known and popular. "My service record was tremendous, but I had taken  it for granted."

The other major topic of conversation was Estes-Sumpter's weight, as some NABJ members wondered if the public would take her seriously.

"The most hurtful part was that I was the victim of fat discrimination.  A lot of my sisters were talking about me like a dog," she said. "That hurt me more than anything. I felt that that was a personal attack."

Elected at age 36 in Kansas City, Estes-Sumpter brought a spark to the organization that hadn't been seen before.

For the first time, Ebony Magazine listed NABJ - specifically  Estes-Sumpter's name and photograph - among its top 100 black  organizations.

"I made it into Ebony, so I knew we had arrived," she said. "But I think the primary thing that I brought to the organization was more fire,  which is kind of esoteric. I was a lot more in your face, aggressive, challenging, demanding."

Her defining moment came in 1993 at the Houston convention, when she crossed paths with Bushwick Bill, the diminutive rapper who was an opening-session panelist on rap music.

At one point during the panel discussion, Bushwick Bill said the only women he ever knew, including his mother, were "bitches and ho's."

Estes-Sumpter was just outside of the conference room and didn't actually hear the comments. But she did see women suddenly streaming out of the meeting room. She glided through the hushed room and went straight  to the stage - and to the rapper.

"I walked into the session, disrupted it, got control of the mike and told him that that kind of behavior and language is unacceptable here,"  Estes-Sumpter recalled. "As a black woman, I demanded their respect."

Bushwick Bill humbly apologized.

Any doubts about Estes-Sumpter were put to rest.

"It was classic Sidmel," said Dawkins. "She didn't blink."

Estes-Sumpter spent much of her second year as president preparing to return to Atlanta in 1994 for the first "Unity" convention of 6,000 black, Hispanic, Asian and Native-American journalists.

For her, it was like coming full circle.

"The success of '94 was due to the Atlanta Association of Black  Journalists," said Estes-Sumpter. "That was my proudest moment for NABJ and for me personally - to pull off a totally awesome convention. I still  get chills thinking about it. That convention will always be special for me."

Years later, Estes-Sumpter is still outspoken about NABJ. In particular, she wants the organization to own its headquarters building, provide more internships and scholarships and rely less on corporate  sponsorship.

"We get a lot of support from the media organizations," she said. "If I  am gonna slam somebody in one breath and ask for money in the other,  something isn't right."

Looking at Estes-Sumpter scramble to get home to watch her kids play in a baseball game coached by her husband, you kind of believe her when she says her bark is worse than her bite.

"When I got elected, I proved that women were and will be co-equal with  our brothers and were just as capable of performing any type of task," she  said. "Sex is not an issue anymore. People vote for the best candidate. It  doesn't matter whether you are a man, woman or gay."

Ernie Suggs, an urban affairs reporter at the Atlanta  Journal-Constitution, was a 1988 NABJ intern and a 1997 NABJ award winner  for enterprise reporting.

JACK E. WHITE
LYNN NORMENT