Benjamin Todd Jealous, the new president and CEO of the NAACP, says his greatest obstacle is "the lack of outrage about the ways that young people and working people are routinely mistreated." He cites figures such as a 70 percent unsolved murder rate in some black communities, blacks graduating from high school at a far lower rate than whites, and studies showing that whites with criminal records get jobs easier than blacks with clean histories. "There are issues of basic fairness, obstacles to opportunity, that still exist," Jealous says. "The NAACP is needed now as urgently as it has ever been."

No one group did more to pave the way for Obama's ascension than the NAACP, historians say, pointing to its primary role in three towering civil rights victories — the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation ruling, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But now that the black son of a poor single mother has moved into the White House, a new era has clearly begun. "We've got to rise to the occasion today," says former NAACP board chairman Myrlie Evers-Williams, who was married to the slain civil rights icon Medgar Evers. We cannot continue to sing 'We Shall Overcome,'" she says. "It's a dear, valued, valuable song that expresses a time that should live with us. But I want a new song." (AP©)

Here in Ourtown, I've never been sure who the NAACP is or what they do, beyond their annual Freedom Fund gala where they collect a lot of money. There are ongoing membership drives to convince us to become NAACP members, but the organization has done a poor job of telling us why we should. None of which is to suggest the NAACP does nothing, but that one of the things it does poorly is educate the public as to its own relevance.