National Urban League Conference to Mark a Civil Rights Crossroads This Week

In 1903 when the scholar and civil rights leader W.E.B. DuBois predicted that ''the problem of the 20th century will be the problem of the color line,'' African-Americans had every reason to agree.

Seven years earlier, in a case originating in my home state of Louisiana, segregation and the since discredited doctrine of ''separate but equal'' were legalized in the Supreme Court's infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision. That outrageous decision set the stage for the civil rights struggles of the last century. It also helped give birth to two of the greatest defenders of equality in our nation's history - the NAACP, which was founded in 1909, and the National Urban League, which came into existence in 1910.

One hundred years later, both the NAACP and the National Urban League are still opening the doors of freedom, insisting on full admittance for the descendants of slaves. But, because of the leadership of these two organizations and countless others over the last century, many of the legal barriers to equality have fallen.

DuBois would be astonished to see that at the beginning of the 21st century, America elected its first African- American President. The election of Barack Obama was a watershed moment in America's oldest and most difficult internal struggle.

It indicated how far we have come since the Supreme Court agreed with the State of Louisiana that a Black man could be jailed for sitting in the ''Whites Only'' section of a rail car. And for the National Urban League, it signals an important shift in both our mission and our message.

Incidents like the expulsion of Black children from a swimming pool in Philadelphia and the wide disparities in education, criminal justice and health make it clear that the civil rights struggle is not over.

But, we have reached a crossroads. The big challenges now facing our communities are increasingly the same as those facing the rest of the country. While African-Americans continue to suffer disproportionately from the lack of universal health care, the epidemic of housing foreclosures, and the current economic meltdown, we are not alone.
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