Throughout the 1990s, scattered reports of class and generational warfare among Black Americans entered mainstream consciousness. Anyone paying just a little attention during the last decade of the 20th century picked up this Black community dynamic.

While the mass media spent the 1970s and 1980s acknowledging the emergence of a new Black middle class, in the last decade the same media has been careful to note the growing marginalization and isolation of the Black urban poor, especially teenagers and young adults.

Facing an unrelenting series of public health epidemics-AIDS, teen pregnancy, gun violence, substance abuse, depression and nihilism-that threaten to destroy the indomitable spirit, resiliency and infrastructure of Black America. Traditional Black civil rights leadership failed to respond in an effective manner to this tidal wave of late 20th century despair and dislocation.

In the 1990s, it became clear that the Black civil rights leadership was put off by the attitudes and values of this current generation of young poor people. Without question, a wide and deep gulf exists between a generation of 17 million African Americans born since the passage of 1964 and 1965 civil rights legislation and their elders born before the 1954 Brown Decision.

While some Black civil rights leaders blame "Ghetto Fabulous" hip-hop culture and gangsta rap music for the worsening socioeconomic conditions in Black America, the late 20th century eclipse of Black life has much more to do with the institutional collapse of the inner city and the failure of traditional Black social and civic organizations to mobilize, organize and empower its most isolated, abandoned and abundant asset -- the hip-hop generation. This failure explains the 21st century Hip-hop nation's entrepreneurial spirit, institution building and political awakening.

Organizational Collapse
The early 20th century gave birth to several important African American civil rights organizations, most notably the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League. As the new millennium approaches, these non-profit civil rights advocacy organizations face daunting challenges. The social, economic, political and cultural decay of American institutions threatens to undermine Black civil society and its steady progress toward social justice and racial equality.

As the problems of American society mount, African American civil rights organizations face the widespread perception that they are no longer relevant because traditional civil rights advocacy, and its agenda of federal government intervention and social integration has reached its limits.

According to a wide range of critics, civil rights advocacy led by traditional civil rights leaders is unresponsive and impotent in this post-civil rights period, which is increasingly characterized by racial intolerance, the renewal of states rights and the dismantling of the federal government's protective domestic social policies and programs.

This harsh critique of the civil rights movement is most pronounced among Black youth. Largely framed as a criticism of traditional Black leaders, most young African Americans, born since the passage of civil and voting rights legislation in 1964 and 1965 have lost their confidence in the leadership of civil rights organizations. Many believe that traditional Black leaders lack the capacity; desire and ingenuity to address the contemporary crises that destabilize Black working-class life and destroy Black neighborhoods and families.

As a consequence, an entire generation is now profoundly disconnected from Black civic action and civil rights activism. And because traditional social and civic organizations in the Black community have failed to reach out and engage this new generation of post-civil rights citizens, the future of Black institutional and organizational leadership with the vision, capacity and innovation necessary for the 21st century is bleak.

Many scholars trace the crisis of purpose facing traditional civil rights organizations back to the 1940s and its adoption of a formidable legal strategy. In the courts, CP lawyers whittled away at Jim Crow laws by assembling legal cases that could challenge the 1896 Supreme Court decision that upheld racial segregation. This strategy culminated in 1954 with Brown v. Topeka Board Of Education, when the Supreme Court overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision by determining that separate schools were inherently unequal.

It was during this same period, however, that the NAACP's preeminent community organizer, Ella Josephine Baker, observed that the organization's shortcoming was its successful legal strategy. During her tenure as assistant field secretary, many local branches were financially supportive of the national office.

This limited relationship around fundraising deeply disturbed Baker because she saw an important role for leadership and the development of local organizational capacity. The legal strategy, Baker argued, had to be directed by lawyers and other professionals, which left most of the huge base of the "masses" little meaningful role in the development of policy, program or local civic infrastructure.

When promoted to serve as the national director of branches, Baker reorganized the overall structure of the NAACP's fieldwork. She advocated for regional offices so that local leaders would have a source of assistance nearer than the New York national office. She cajoled local chapters to build programs and organizational capacity. And she provided opportunities for local leaders to talk, network and receive valuable training to enhance both their skills and political consciousness.

In her 1945 resignation letter to the NAACP, Baker noted the critical issues that would plague the civil rights establishment throughout the 20th century: an authoritarian and undemocratic decision-making process, the lack of program vision and strategy and poor organizational management. She left the NAACP believing its agenda was too overly oriented to the Black middle class and, perhaps more importantly, she found the organization entirely too centralized to have any influence or impact at the local level.

Reinventing Black Civil Society
The restoration of effective institutional leadership at the local level is the single most important challenge facing those who seek to renew democracy and civic participation. America's core institutions -- families, neighborhoods, schools, government, faith communities and media -- lack leadership, vision and clarity of purpose. Only through a renewed effort to identify, train and nurture a new kind of leadership that embraces collaboration, innovation, vision, creativity and competency will this nation move toward addressing its societal breakdown.

America's leadership crisis is further compounded by a significant structural transformation that is taking place in the global economy. This post-capitalist, post-industrialist, post-civil rights society is the context for a brave new world view. As we move into a global economy, leaders in both the public and private spheres face the daunting challenge of managing the social, economic and political challenges such transformation is creating.

It is within this rapidly transforming global context that Black leadership must adjust. The current Black leadership is viewed as ineffective and incapable of leading the Black community into the next century. But, transformation and reinvention of Black civil society must be a major priority for Black leadership.

By establishing new ways of approaching problems, of thinking, of connecting with constituents, and providing them with knowledge (information), the transformation of traditional Black institutions and organizations is a realizable goal. The next generation of Black leadership must construct a new leadership paradigm that will have to consider the:

• Value and practice of democracy within the social change sphere
• Need for ideological pluralism and recognition of Black diversity
• Need to develop systematically the leadership of women and young people
• Value of collaborative leadership and citizen participation
• Necessity of developing organizations and institutions capable of reflecting values, goals and mission beyond the single charismatic leader.

Building intergenerational, nurturing organizations systematically also must be a priority for those who understand that Black America must rebuild its infrastructure and capacity to respond to both internal sociocultural crises, as well as the mean-spirited external retrenchment of government.

Restoring Black civil society is a necessary prerequisite for effectively confronting the multi-front wars being waged against poor Black people and their communities. Without a viable civic infrastructure there is no way Black America can or will resist the massive poverty, marginalization, greed, violence and despair that defines the next century's global capitalism.

© August 2005 By Afromerica