US black 'summit' seeks single voice: The civil rights movement is in danger, Rupert Cornwell reports from Washington

THE MEDIA attention, inevitably, was on Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and on the 50 or so Jewish demonstrators who turned out to greet him. But the real topic of this week's gathering of the great and good of black America is far more sombre - how to tackle what one historian has called 'perhaps the greatest crisis since slavery.' Of that crisis, the fuss caused by Mr Farrakhan's periodic anti- Semitic outbursts is only a small part.

The occasion has few precedents. In pre-Civil War days there were National Negro Conventions to promote the cause of black freedom. But scant modern counterpart exists for this 'National African-American Leadership Summit,' organised by the NAACP at its Baltimore headquarters, and assembling dozens of prominent blacks from walks of life ranging from politics, academic life and the church to medicine, sports and the media.

Individually, none of them has as much at stake as the NAACP itself. Traditionally this doyen of civil rights organisations has been moderate. But as its very name - the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People - half implies, the NAACP has grown out of touch. It has little relevance for a younger, angrier generation of blacks, many of them trapped without hope in America's crumbling inner cities. Politically, the NAACP is increasingly upstaged by the Congressional black caucus on issues of special black concern like Haiti.

This week's three-day gathering is at one level a bid by Benjamin Chavis, its executive director of just 12 months, to put matters right. He first made his name at the militant, radical end of the old civil rights movement - which helps explain his invitation to Mr Farrakhan. That initiative, and meetings with urban gang leaders, has provoked demands from some NAACP traditionalists for his resignation.

But, he retorts, black America can only bring about a lasting improvement in its fortunes if it speaks with one voice. 'To do civil rights, you have to do controversial things,' he told the Wall Street Journal last week. 'I've made some people uncomfortable, but I've brought new life to the NAACP.'

Today its fortunes could hardly be lower. The optimism generated by the great civil rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s has vanished, almost without trace. Instead black America is identified with drugs, violence and poverty and a feckless dependence on welfare. In terms of prosperity and social standing, blacks have frequently been overtaken by more recent immigrant groups, notably Hispanics and Asians.

As Mr Chavis himself, with much convolution and understatement, put it to Sunday's opening session: amid the great changes of the 1990s, 'the forward momentum of African-American political, economic, social cultural and spiritual progress appears increasingly in a state of uncertainty and jeopardy'.

Three days of discussions, most of them behind closed doors, are unlikely to produce solutions. Certainly they will not come up with anything as concrete as the dollars 10bn ( pounds 6.6bn) package due to be outlined today by President Clinton, aimed at moving younger people (in practice largely young blacks) off welfare rolls into jobs - private sector if possible, publicly funded ones if neccessary.

The talks could shift the argument beyond Mr Farrakhan, seen by moderate blacks as a hate-merchant who does nothing but disservice to their cause. But Mr Chavis argues that support in the inner cities especially makes the Nation of Islam leader a factor which cannot be ignored. And in his own remarks on Sunday, Mr Farrakhan seemed to accept the proffered olive branch.

After the leading theologian and academic Cornel West had told the meeting that the black freedom struggle was 'bigger than each and every one of us,' Mr Farrakhan acknowledged that he had been wrong in belittling Martin Luther King as a civil rights leader.

If reconciliation can be secured, the NAACP must then devise a strategy. Working papers for the meeting focus on such ideas as strengthening the black foothold in the information and communications industries, improving job training for the young, and finding alternatives to prison for young offenders.

As of now, all this is little more than wishful thinking. But few dispute the significance of the 'summit', for the NAACP and for black America as a whole. 'Every decade or so we change direction,' William Gibson, NAACP chairman and a solid ally of Mr Chavis, has declared. 'This will be one of those changes.' (Photograph omitted)