The president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP who planed to present LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling with a Lifetime Achievement Award has resigned.

Leon Jenkins stepped down Thursday, saying he hoped his resignation would help "to separate the Los Angeles NAACP and the NAACP from the negative exposure I have caused."

Jenkins had been planning on presenting Sterling with the award at a ceremony later this month, during the 100th anniversary celebration of the LA NAACP. Those plans were abruptly rescinded when recordings of Sterling making racist remarks surfaced last weekend.

It would have been the second time Jenkins had honored Sterling with the award, the first coming in 2009, a year after Jenkins had been elected president.

As various outlets have reported, Sterling's receipt of NAACP awards, despite his lengthy track record of racially oppressive business practices, may have been due to his monetary donations to the organization itself. Jenkins explained that the reason he had selected Sterling for his second lifetime achievement award was for his donations to minority charities and regularly providing Clippers tickets to inner-city children. 

In 2010, the Donald T. Sterling Charitable Foundation gave $5,000 to the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP. Earlier in the week, Jenkins would not say specifically how much Sterling had given the organization, dismissing it as a negligible amount.