"He wasn't even thought of when Martin Luther King was killed," Spence said. "He wasn't born until '72."
By choosing someone from a more technocratic than a church-based background, Spence said, the NAACP is starting to make good on its talk over recent years of looking toward the future and embracing youth.
"If we're going to modernize, we have to get rid of the tendency to rely on our pastors to do our political work," Spence said. "We have to have some semblance of a division of church and state in our black politics."
Spence says the NAACP still has its work cut out for it - what modern organization has a cumbersome 64-member board these days? - but thinks it might be able to attract a younger membership with Jealous at the helm.
For all the talk of change, though, Jealous doesn't represent a complete break from the past: His parents were active in desegregation efforts, and he has worked as an organizer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Plus, he has the support of one of the lions of the civil rights movement, Julian Bond, the NAACP chairman.
"He is someone immersed in the civil rights culture, so this is a continuation," said Ronald Walters, the director of the Center for African-American Leadership at the University of Maryland. "The departure is the age factor. You've got to say they're sending a signal of generational change."
Walters knows Jealous from a leadership forum that brings together the heads of the 25 top black organizations - the new NAACP president previously headed a national group of black newspapers - and remembers him as someone who frequently was the youngest person in the room.
"For a young man, he has a very extensive national network of contacts," said Walters, who is a life member of the NAACP.
With the NAACP coming off of several years of budgetary struggles, Walters thinks Jealous' background in running other organizations will serve him well in his new job.
"The fact that he comes from a foundation background," Walters said, means "he knows where the money is."
Now, if only Jealous, whose mother's family is from Baltimore, would consider keeping the national headquarters here rather than moving to Washington, as Bond has long planned.
jean.marbella@baltsun.com
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