I have said it before and I will say it again: Economic empowerment is the civil rights struggle of the 21st Century.

The civil rights movement of the1960s helped the African-American community take great strides in terms of political and social empowerment. Doors long closed to people of color were pried open with the enactment of civil rights legislation, affirmative action and other reforms designed to give them a voice on Capitol Hill, in academia and corporate America.

President Bush’s recent signing of the Voting Rights Act reauthorization ended a long and difficult struggle to ensure the renewal of this very important statue—considered to be the centerpiece of the 1960s civil rights movement.

Originally enacted in 1965, the Voting Rights Act has enfranchised millions of African- American citizens by eliminating discriminatory practices, such as literacy tests, poll taxes and other means, to discourage political participation. It also served to open up the political arena for blacks seeking elected office.

It was the National Urban League’s top legislative priority for three years to get expiring provisions of the historic act extended 25 years.

A devastating path of death and destruction.  Results much worse than expected.  A national catastrophe.  Our tsunami.

Even these terrible words, spoken by news reporters on the scene and local and state officials in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, don’t do justice to the fury of nature that has ravaged the coastal and inland regions of these three states.

All or significant sections of Mobile, Alabama, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mississippi and their surrounding areas are inundated with many feet of water—all of it contaminated with the detritus of the hurricane, and, in some places, electrified by downed but still live power lines.

May 17, 2004, this coming Monday, is a school day, a work day.

Which is appropriate because the decision the U.S. Supreme Court handed up fifty years ago on the May 17 of 1954 in the landmark school segregation case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka set out a lesson a large number of the citizens and the state and local governments of the United States of America had long refused to learn.

And, today, albeit the wonderful progress made, American society is still a considerable distance from the end of the learning curve that would make the promise of Brown a reality.

Last week I became the beneficiary of a great privilege and responsibility:  I was appointed president and chief executive of the National Urban League.

Actually, I can say without hesitation that long before last week I was a beneficiary of the Urban League, too.

For its commitment since its founding ninety years ago to expanding opportunity for African Americans is part of the bedrock of progress which made it possible for me to aspire to, to compete for, and to serve for two years as a senator in the Louisiana state legislature, and then serve two four-year terms as the mayor of that great southern metropolis, New Orleans.