By the early 1980s civil rights organizations were seen as relics needing new forms.

Evidence

Organizations like the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Urban League, and Operation PUSH were seen as relics of the past. Roy Wilkins, the longtime executive director of the NAACP, died and Vernon Jordan stepped down from the leadership of the National Urban League. Matters of black leadership were changing. In response, people like Representative Walter E. Fauntroy, Democratic delegate in the United States House from the District of Columbia and chair of the CBC, said, “We do not have a single leader, nor do the times dictate that there be.” Here Fauntroy echoed the sentiments expressed by Roger Wilkins in a New York Times editorial on September 28, 1981: “Times are hard and changing. We blacks need to be innovative and sacrificing to meet the old challenges in new forms as well as the truly new challenges, as President Reagan might say. What we don’t need is a new, media appointed leader.” — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 466

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the decline narrative around civil-rights-era institutions and the ‘no single leader’ moment that presages current debates about black leadership fragmentation.