Civil rights groups: why they're essential today

Jet, Jan 31, 2005

Racism and unequal treatment have not been stamped out in the new millennium.

The White entry-level employee you once trained is now your boss. That house in an affluent suburb you were told was sold, is still on the market. It took you forever to get seated at that restaurant, and when you were, it took hours for you to be waited on and served. Police pull you over in your new car, again.

There's nothing new under the sun. Your parents experienced some of the same racism and civil rights violations you're experiencing in your life. Only the indignities they endured in the '60s were far worse than those suffered today.

It was the '60s that produced some of the most powerful and prominent civil rights groups of our time: the National Urban League (NUL); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), as well as newer generation civil rights groups like the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition (RPC) and the National Action Network (NAN).

With the recent attacks on Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Act (which eliminated barriers constructed to prevent Blacks from voting) soon to go under review, leaders within these prominent organizations tell JET they want the younger generation to recognize that civil rights groups are more than a rearview mirror that shows how far we've come, they also gauge how far we need to go.

NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE

"I think civil rights organizations are very important, but [they now] have the new challenge of reaching out to the younger professionals as well as the hip-hop generation. We have to reach out to them so they can gain a better understanding of the history that created the opportunities that many of them enjoy today," says National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial.

"People tend to think sometimes the Civil Rights Era was a [moment in time] and they also tend to stereotype civil rights groups by thinking of civil rights groups as always protesting or marching, not as civil rights being the mission and the objective. There area variety of tactics used: protesting, marching, litigating ... now the power of the vote and the power of political participation."

And just as different parts of a person's body perform different tasks to benefit itself, explains Morial, civil rights groups do the same thing to benefit Blacks.

"It's all too common that people look at civil rights organizations as being all the same, and essentially similar. The truth is while we are similar in mission and objective, we do very different types of things, and for the NUL, the uniqueness of our work is that we area direct service organization.."

NAACP

"We are a social justice organization, and while we provide some social service, our mission is to fight racial discrimination. That's what we do," explains NAACP Board Chairman, Julian Bond.

"While many advances have been made in our 95 years, race still remains a barrier to progress for people of color. As long as that is so, we'll continue in our mission," Bond says about why the NAACP continues to be a relevant and vibrant civil rights group.

Bond stands in agreement with Morial when he states that a number of Blacks, both young and old, tend to make the mistake of thinking the struggle for civil rights is over.

"We know that there is a large body of opinion in America that says that racial discrimination isn't the problem anymore," states Bond. "In fact, many people think it was wiped away by Martin Luther King 40 years ago. But you know, we know that it's still a pervasive problem affecting every Black American no matter how wealthy of how poor, and we're determined to root it out."

Bond, who bristles at the statements about the NAACP being irrelevant to the next generation, states that, "African-Americans recognize our value ... [and] if they think they don't need us now, that's because we, and others, made the lives they live more possible today. If they don't think they need us now, sadly the time will come when they will."

SCLC

"You must have a vehicle that's known to take on direct action such as the SCLC, to raise the tough questions, to raise the consciousness in terms of the inequities of oppressed groups that we've historically been known for in this country," says SCLC President Charles Steele, Jr.

With regard to the younger generation, President Steele, a former Alabama state senator, says the organization is "pregnant with possibilities."

"In relation to the hip-hop generation, we are actually going to go out and make constructive movies ... we're going to make movies of substance, movies that are relevant, not only to the hip-hop generation, but to cultivate that generation to the older generation of today.

"We are relevant, we are pregnant [with causes] and we are prevalent, due to the fact that we as a people, as people of color, of African descent, realize you must always on a daily basis, fight for equality, justice and freedom. It's not something you take a break on. It's not anything you can take for granted," says Steele.