Haki Madhabuti, a middle-aged poet and pan-African nationalist, did something last month that he never thought he would do. He wrote out a check for $500 and joined the traditionally moderate and thoroughly mainstream National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
He did so because he admires the efforts of the N.A.A.C.P.'s executive director, Benjamin F. Chavis, to reach out further than the organization ever has to the kaleidoscope of black America, from its working- and middle-class backbone to its Hip Hop and discontented young to its nationalist left and right, including Louis Farrakhan, who was invited by Mr. Chavis to a gathering of civil rights leaders last month in Baltimore, occasioning harsh criticism of the N.A.A.C.P. head. "Ben Chavis is a breath of fresh air," Mr. Madhubuti said. "He's a visionary."
Around the same time, Michael Meyers, a former official of the civil rights organization and a member for nearly 30 years, slammed his checkbook shut in disgust and a howl of betrayal. Then he went on television and vowed to do everything possible to oust Mr. Chavis for the very things that made the poet so hopeful.
"The N.A.A.C.P. has been hijacked by black extremists and radicals," Mr. Meyers said in a recent interview. "We have to get it back."
This weekend, the N.A.A.C.P. is gathering in Chicago for its 85th annual convention, where the two factions will surely clash like bitter brothers fighting over their grandfather's inheritance.
What is ultimately at stake is the soul of the N.A.A.C.P. And, because it is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group, the future of the entire civil rights movement, so successful a generation ago, seemingly so unfocused and confused today, could also hang in the balance.
Trapped in Its Past?
Some veterans of the struggle are debating the merits of coalitions between mainstream groups like the N.A.A.C.P. and more extreme organizations like Mr. Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Some are even asking if the civil rights movement is relevant any longer. After all, they say, the granddaddy of the movement sometimes seems trapped in its past and still uses the word "colored" in its title.
What makes the future even more hazy is the fact that blacks can hardly hear each other debate the issues over the din of competing black voices. They belong to people as diverse as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the author and scholar Cornel West. They belong to Republicans, socialists, Baptists, Democrats, Muslims, civil rights veterans singing "We Shall Overcome" and former gang leaders turned urban peacemakers.
"It's not just a diversity of opinion," said Adolph Reed Jr., a professor of political science at Northwestern University. "It's a diversity of interests. There used to be a least common denominator. There isn't any more."
The Jim Crow laws and lynch mobs that made unity easier and clearer 30 years ago are gone. But so are the Fannie Lous, the Malcolms and the Martins who inspired so many out of their homes and into the streets to face police dogs and firehoses.
A few voices on the right and the left now say the N.A.A.C.P and its civil rights kin should also go, that they have outlived their usefulness.
"What you're seeing today," said Robert Woodson, a black conservative and the president of an organization that trains community groups, "is a civil rights leadership that continues to apply policies that were effective 30 years ago but are ineffective in addressing the challenges and issues of today."
It isn't having a cup of coffee at a lunch counter but being able to get a mortgage to buy the coffee shop that is a cutting-edge issue today, along with crime and political power. A few years ago, for example, black mayors led the nation's three largest cities. Today, three white men, including two Republicans, control New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
"We have to do something and quick," says the Chicago writer Salim Muwakkil. "We are being buried beneath an avalanche of negative statistics, and the Federal Government has other concerns."
Instead of retiring groups like the N.A.A.C.P., Mr. Muwakkil and many others say, it is time to retool the movement and to map new strategies. The civil rights movement, they say, might be needed more than ever in these days when the threat to life and limb in black America comes from so many different directions, from the bank that refuses to lend a dime to the inner city to the boy who lives next door and carries a pistol, a crack vial and a heart turned to stone by disappointment and hopelessness.
Coffee Isn't Enough
"The historical circumstances have changed fundamentally from the days we sought an integrated cup of coffee," said Manning Marable, a professor of history and the director of Columbia University's Institute for Research in African-American Studies. "The terms of the debate are not about integration anymore. The issue now is black survival in an era when the number of black people who are in prison doubles every seven years. It's a brave new world where the old political rules no longer fit. What is required is a breakthrough in the political imagination of today's black political leadership. The problems facing African-Americans today require a whole new set of political assumptions and skills."
Joseph Lowery, the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a longtime member of the old guard of the civil rights movement, agreed. "The issues are more complex today," he said. "But racism is still blatant. In the 60's we were talking about breaking down the legal barriers. The issue now is political alignment. One party takes us for granted, the other just takes us."
Up to 40,000 people are expected to attend the N.A.A.C.P. convention, which will run for six days. Mr. Meyers said he will attend and spend much of his time drumming up support for what he calls the Ad-Hoc Committee to Save the N.A.A.C.P. "If the N.A.A.C.P. becomes just another black radical organization," Mr. Meyers said, "there will be a dramatic and drastic decline."
Mr. Madhubuti said he will also attend the convention, his first. "I not only joined the N.A.A.C.P.," he said. "I bought a lifetime membership." He laughed in wonderment and then became serious again. "If Ben Chavis is thwarted in his move to make the N.A.A.C.P. more inclusive, that will be a serious setback for all of us. In the 60's we had a saying, 'unity without uniformity.' We have to try to make it work. I don't see any other alternative."
