FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:

Leslie A. Dunbar, National Urban League

(212)558-5438

Bob Ellison/Ayesha London, Walls Comm.

202/333-6181

New York, NY, July 30, 2000–In his keynote address delivered on Sun., July 30 at his organization\\\'s 2000 annual conference, National Urban League President Hugh B. Price proclaimed that, at the start of the 21^st century, the African-American community’s primary task–and "Job One" for the Urban League movement– is to complete the drive into the economic mainstream and attain economic self-sufficiency.

According to Price, the Urban League movement, its constituents and the African- American community at large must secure economic self-reliance, economic parity and economic power for the black community.

In the speech, Mr. Price outlines the chief ways to meet these goals: ensuring that our children are well educated; helping families become economically self-reliant through good jobs, homeownership, entrepreneurship and wealth accumulation; and asserting our civil rights and eradicating any barriers to the American mainstream.

However, he noted, "White Americans didn’t reach the middle class entirely under their own steam. The G.I. Bill, low-interest home mortgage guarantees, sparkling new schools in sparkling new segregated suburbs–those, too, were jumpstarts financed by the federal government. The same is true of all the prison construction that is resuscitating small town economies today."

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Said Price, "Since education is the surest route to the middle class, the first jumpstart I propose is 21^st century schools for 21^st century children." He said this requires three things:

1. Recruiting a new generation of urban educators who are compensated on par with other professionals and who are held more accountable for their performance, with fewer of the traditional protections from accountability, like lifelong tenure and seniority.
2. Granting urban schools greater autonomy, but holding them strictly accountable for their performance, to the point of insisting that at least 75 percent of the pupils meet established education standards. This would be tantamount to "charterizing" all urban schools in struggling districts.
3. Replacing mammoth, obsolete, anonymous schools with new schools that are small, state-of-the art and focused on learning. There is substantial evidence that urban youngsters perform better in smaller schools.

Next in his address, Price noted that hundreds of thousands of people in inner cities are out of the economic loop with little prospect of getting inside, without a deeply transformational experience that equips them for work and self-reliance. They are the school dropouts and chronic welfare recipients who lack job skills, self-confidence and a sense of purpose to climb out of their current circumstances.

"Accordingly," Price said, "in the generous American tradition of giving people a second chance, I propose that the federal and state governments create what I call an Opportunity Corps. [The Opportunity Corps] would be modeled after the highly successful National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Corps. In essence, I am calling for the \\\'demilitarization\\\' of what the Pentagon knows about developing people."

Bolstering the argument that such a program is viable, Price pointed out that 73 percent of the ChalleNGe Corps graduates have earned their GED (which is 12% higher than the national average); 20 percent landed jobs; 17 percent enrolled in college; 5 percent returned to high school and 10 percent enrolled in adult education.

The agenda-related portion of Price\\\'s speech closed with a discussion of lingering racism in the criminal justice system. In particular, he concentrated on the utter immorality of capital punishment and endorsed its repeal, or at least the imposition of a nation-wide moratorium on executions.

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Failing that, Price proposed that the burden of proof in capital cases be stiffened. In traditional criminal cases, where the defendant’s liberty is at stake, the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt," he explained. Where a defendent’s very life is at risk, he argued that the federal government and the states should legislate a much higher burden of proof for conviction of a capital offense — "beyond any doubt" in the minds of the judge and the jury.

Hugh B. Price is President of the National Urban League, the 90-year-old community-based movement that focuses on moving African Americans into the economic mainstream. He was appointed on July 1, 1994.

Founded in 1910, the National Urban League is a nonprofit organization whose 115 affiliates in 35 states and the District of Columbia provide direct services focused on empowering African-Americans to achieve economic, academic and racial equality. The League’s headquarters is located at 120 Wall Street in New York City.

For copies of Price\\\'s keynote address, delivered on Sun., Jul. 30 at the League\\\'s 2000 Annual Conference, which takes place Jul. 29 through Aug. 2, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, please call (212)558-5438 and follow the directions.

Hugh B. Price

We meet on the 90^th anniversary of the founding of the National Urban League, right here in New York City. Ours is a glorious story to tell. We’ve captured it in a magnificent pictorial history exhibit that will be on display in the convention center starting tomorrow. The exhibit is also traveling to our affiliates all across the country. As we New Yorkers say, check it out. You’re in for an important and thoroughly enjoyable history lesson.

Looking back over our history, there have been four great surges by African Americans toward the economic mainstream since the Civil War.

The first occurred right after the Emancipation Proclamation, when we founded insurance companies and colleges. We elected blacks to the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Given a whiff of real freedom and opportunity, we went for it and made amazing progress in just one generation. Then Jim Crow clamped down and brought Reconstruction to a screeching halt.

The second surge came in the early 1900s. Determined to escape the crushing poverty and suffocating segregation of the South, our folk packed their meager belongings and migrated to the supposed "promised land" of the big cities up North.

In fact, that’s about when the National Urban League was founded. The year was 1910. And the reason was to help our people cope with the harsh challenges of urban life and gain access to the mainstream. We helped them find homes and jobs, pick schools for their children and combat discrimination in everyday life.

World War II triggered the next great surge toward the economic mainstream. When FDR cranked up America’s war machine to whip Hitler, we flocked to communities with weapons plants and aircraft factories and landed some of those good manufacturing jobs.

A decade after the war ended, the Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954 outlawed legalized segregation once and for all. But the landmark court decision didn’t automatically open up the doors of opportunity.

It took the synchronized efforts of Martin and Malcolm, Whitney and Roy, and the patriarch of the civil rights movement, A. Philip Randolph, to maintain the pressure on white America. And to its eternal credit, it took the much-maligned black power movement to force open those doors much wider than they’d ever been before.

This was the watershed period in American history when the nation’s mainstream institutions — from the corporations to the colleges, from the unions to the universities — grudgingly began loosening their iron grip on white privilege and letting people of color into the game. It was the era when they finally saw the light.

We must never forget — nor dishonor — the name for what they did. It’s called -- affirmative action. Affirmative action has come under withering attack in recent years. Even so, it’s made an enormous difference — and does to this day. I’m certain that’s the main reason it’s under attack.

Although the critics won’t give it credit, affirmative action produced the fourth great surge by black folk into the economic mainstream. How has it done so? By opening up access to white-collar America — namely, all those Fortune 500 companies and the historically white universities that supply them with managers and executives. The growth of the black middle class really picked up steam thanks to affirmative action.

That’s the bright state of black America today. But there’s a bleaker side of the story as well. Millions of black families and children have yet to make the journey to the economic mainstream. The journey from welfare dependence to economic independence. From isolation to assimilation. From poverty to prosperity.

Getting the rest of our folk across the goal line and squarely into the middle class — that is the main unfinished business facing America, African Americans and our great Urban League movement at the onset of the 21^st century.

Yes, I know folklore tells us we’re supposed to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps. But the fact of the matter is that we’ve been hoisting ourselves up for 400 years, all the while with Jim Crow and all his kin sitting on our head.

Yet we keep the faith in America and we soldier on. We shall prevail. No matter how many times and how many ways they rewrite the rules. No matter how many barricades they erect in front of us. We will never turn back. Nor will we allow anyone else to turn us back, ever again. That’s why we must summon the will and the resources to mount the next great surge toward the American mainstream.

There’s never been a better time in U.S. history to make our move. Now, when unemployment rates hover at record lows. Now, when half of America’s 60 biggest cities are basking in unemployment rates around 3 percent or better. Now, when my colleagues at the Orlando Urban League tell me the economy in their town is so hot that employers are hiring parolees who prove to be eager, loyal and productive workers.

Now, when American corporations are so determined to prosper and prevail that they are importing guest workers in droves to fill empty jobs. Now, when the demand for labor is so tight that employers will care more and more about employees’ qualifications and less and less about their complexion.

As I’ve said, Economic Power is the Next Civil Rights Frontier. To cross that frontier, we must complete our drive into the economic mainstream, into the vast American middle class.

That is Job One for America in the 21^st century. That is Job One for black folk. And that, I believe to the marrow of my bones, is Job One for the Urban League.

I call upon our great movement to lead the charge into the economic mainstream. That was our bottom line goal for our people the day we were founded in 1910. And that, I believe to the depths of my heart, is the manifest destiny of the Urban League movement in the 21^st century.

In fact, let me pause for just a moment for some Urban League family talk. You know, when a venerable and revered institution like the Urban League turns 90, that’s getting to be too old to be labeled all the time as someone else’s younger sibling.

It’s too old to keep being called the second largest this or the second oldest that. Too old, nearly a century after our birth, to have to explain, over and over, how we differ from anybody else. I don’t care who it is or how close we are.

Sisters and brothers, I say the 21^st century should herald a new era and a new image for our great Urban League movement.

On this, the outset of our second century of leadership and service, anniversary and, in this, the city of our birth, l hereby proclaim that our great Urban League movement is born again.

From this day forward, when people picture Urban League, I want them to see the vigorous community-based movement that equips our youngsters for economic self-reliance by ensuring that they’re well educated. I want them to see the visionary movement that created the National Achievers Society to inspire our youngsters to excel in school.

I want them to see the Urban League charter schools, like the Leadership Academy in Springfield Mass. where, two weeks ago, youngsters who’d been lagging badly behind in school actually learned to pilot an airplane. This shows that when the Urban League helps our youngsters believe they can fly, we can teach them to touch the sky.

When people hear Urban League, I want them to think of the movement that steers families into the economic mainstream by helping breadwinners land good jobs and become investors. I want them to know how the Washington Urban League and many other affiliates provide credit counseling and financial assistance so families finally can realize their dream of buying their first home.

When people read about the Urban League or spot us on TV, I want them to know we’re out there fighting for our civil rights and battling against the discrimination and indifference that keep us from sharing fully in the American Dream.

I want the world to see the National Urban League and affiliate leaders like George Dean of the Phoenix Urban League defending the Community Reinvestment Act and affirmative action from right wing assaults. I want them to see Esther Bush of the Pittsburgh Urban League front and center in the struggle to combat police brutality.

I want them to know that Urban Leaguers from Columbia to Charleston and Greenville, South Carolina, linked arms with the NAACP and helped generate that huge turnout for the historic march last January to bring down the Confederate flag. I want them to see Dee Smith of the Winston Salem Urban League spearheading her community’s efforts to promote healthy race relations. I want people to see Urban League CEO Jim Buford of St. Louis, who stands up and even sits down for fairness and justice in his town.

I want them to use the crucially important research studies of our National Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality, which we launched just this month with a visionary grant of $1.5 million from Nationwide Insurance.

So this is my vision for the Urban League movement in the 21^st century. I dream that when anyone anywhere hears Urban League, reads Urban League, thinks Urban League or sees Urban League -- right away they will picture the oldest community-based movement -- the largest community-based movement -- the leading community-based movement devoted to empowering African Americans to enter the economic mainstream.

I want them to picture the movement that is rooted deep in our communities -- the movement that works day in and day out -- from Martin Luther King Boulevard to Main Street, from the corner barber shop to the corridors of power — securing economic self-reliance, parity and power for African Americans.

I want them to picture the movement that is determined today — as we’ve been determined since 1910 -- to level the playing field in every walk of American life.

I want the world to know that the incomparable Urban League movement has no peer when it comes to getting our people — our families and especially our children — into the American mainstream.

Economic self-reliance starts with the children, who equal our destiny. In the information age, education unlocks the door to the economic mainstream. Lousy education leads to economic apartheid.

Whether we’re parents or grandparents, pastors or mentors, we must make absolutely certain that every youngster we take under our wing learns to read and write, reason and compute, and navigate the net.

If they can read, they can study the African Diaspora and Western civilization. They can absorb the teachings of the Bible and savor Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare and Langston Hughes. If they cannot read, all they’ll ever learn is what they see on the tube and hear on the streets. Come to think of it, they can rent a videocassette of Shakespeare in Love. But you can bet they won’t see much of Toni or Langston on TV. Remember, if they can read, they can do algebra and higher math. If they can’t, then forget about it.

The other day, a young brother named Travis Bristol dropped by my office to introduce himself. He had just finished his freshman year in college and is interning at the National Urban League this summer. We got to talking and I asked him how his first year in college had gone. He said it was really rough but he had weathered the academic storm.

I asked Travis what had made it so hard. Mind you, he’s a product of the New York City public schools who showed enough ability and potential to be admitted to one of America’s best colleges.

Listen carefully to his story because there’s an important lesson in it for all of us. Travis said he struggled when his college professors handed him assignments that required him to research, analyze, present and defend his ideas. In high school, his teachers mostly told him what to think.

But the toughest adjustment by far was all the writing. His first year in college, he had to write 40 papers. Travis told me that during his entire time in high school, he wrote just one paper. And it was only about four pages long. He even took several Advanced Placement courses, including English and Political Science. Yet the only writing assignments that his AP teachers gave him were 300-word essays.

That’s shocking. It shows how the schools are imperiling our destiny by shortchanging our children.

Now, I don’t expect parents and pastors to teach youngsters to write term papers. That’s why we pay teachers. But I do say we should check whether our youngsters are getting serious writing assignments. And if not, then head right out to school to ask why not, what’s going to be done about it, when, and what you can do to help.

It borders on child neglect for us to settle for second-class education for our youngsters. Wealthy parents don’t play when it comes to quality education. Nor should we.

If we rear our children so they aren’t serious about learning, if we send them off to school too agitated, too alienated, too sleepy or too abused to learn, then we’ve failed our own flesh and blood.

I don’t care what their buddies say, if we allow our youngsters to grow up believing that academic achievement is above them, beneath them, or beside the point, then we’ve failed them as parents and as a village.

This is why the Urban League movement launched the Campaign for African-American Achievement. It’s the reason we’ve joined forces with the Congress of National Black Churches to create a national achievers society -- to recognize youngsters who excel in school and to encourage wannabe achievers.

The Saturday before Mother’s Day, I participated in the national induction ceremony organized by Bill Clark and the Kansas City Urban League, in partnership with Rev. Wallace Hartsfield of the Metropolitan Missionary Baptist Church. Rev. Hartsfield heads the CNBC.

How I wish you could have been there with us. Picture 150 achievers sporting their snazzy achievers society jackets. You can’t buy them at the Sports Authority or Old Navy.

It’s what’s on your report card, not what’s in your wallet, that determines whether you get one of these limited edition jackets.

Picture 200 grade-schoolers in special tee shirts who believe they can achieve. Picture Missionary Baptist Church packed to the rafters with 1300 adoring and proud parents, relatives and teachers.

Conventional wisdom says black boys aren’t into achievement. But I’ll have you know that one-fifth of the inductees that day were males and nearly half of the wannabe achievers were boys.

The credo of our gang, 15,000 strong and growing like gangbusters, is "Achievement Matters." In two dozen other cities across the country that day, we inducted over two-thousand additional achievers. Eleven thousand parents and supporters cheered them on. Our gang is spreading the new gospel of achievement all across the land. And just this Friday night, the National Urban League awarded nearly $2 million dollars in scholarships to our achievers.

A demographer once said that children are 18 percent of the American population, but 100 percent of America’s future. We Urban Leaguers say it more simply — Our Children = Our Destiny.

Since government padlocked the doorway to the American Dream for generations, it bears equal responsibility for moving our people into the economic mainstream, into the middle class. America has a moral obligation to transform the remaining "have-nots" of this country into "haves".

There’s a compelling practical reason as well. The robust American economy absorbs eager and able workers like a sponge. We attract immigrants and import guest workers, who inject energy into our economy and vibrancy into our culture.

But there’s another solution to our labor shortage right under our noses. Take high technology. America’s prosperity, indeed our leadership of the global economy, is driven by growth in science and engineering. Yet these industries face acute shortages of skilled workers. By some estimates, upwards of 400,000 jobs are unfilled. This costs the economy $4 billion annually in lost productivity. If America doesn’t expand the talent pool for high tech, we will forfeit our leadership position.

The high tech industry’s answer is to raise the ceiling on the number of guest workers who are suited for those jobs. Don’t mistake me now. As I said at the outset, immigrants are a vital source of economic energy and cultural vitality. But for all they give America, guest workers are a short-term solution to a structural labor shortage. Translated, that means it enables the high tech industry and politicians to avoid investing in homegrown talent.

Blacks, Latinos and other underrepresented minorities comprise a quarter of America’s workforce. Yet we hold less than 7 percent of the jobs in science, engineering and high tech.

That’s why the National Urban League urged Congress to call a timeout in passing the H1-B legislation that would raise the limit on guest workers destined for high tech. We didn’t throw the stick into the spokes of this legislative juggernaut just for the fun of it. We took this controversial stand because our politicians and the high tech industry aren’t serious yet about developing homegrown talent for the world of high technology.

What’s the answer? It begins with organizations like our Urban League affiliates, which are rooted deeply in the very communities where the untapped young talent lives.

We stand ready to partner with leading high tech companies to create technology centers at every Urban League affiliate. Centers where our folk learn to master the machinery, navigate the net and apply for jobs - now. Centers where the League can identify achievers in grade school and middle school who can be turned on to science, math and engineering.

Centers where mentors can steer these students to the right courses, monitor their grades and tutor them if they struggle academically. Urban League centers where we match high tech companies with promising youngsters early on so that when they graduate, they have an inside track on a career in Silicon Valley.

The Urban League movement is poised to lead our people to the 21^st century "promised land" called cyberspace. If government and industry will meet us halfway, we’ll get there faster — and everyone will win.

This is just one example of why Washington should unleash a new tidal wave of immigration — this one from within. A tidal wave of American citizens empowered to migrate from the economic backwaters of America — from the inner cities and barrios, from Indian country and rural enclaves -- into the economic mainstream.

Yes, millions of African Americans are nestled safely in the middle class. But we must never forget that millions of our folk lead hardscrabble lives outside the mainstream. They’re stranded in obsolete schools, stuck on welfare or hanging out in limbo on the streets. They see little hope, but they aren’t hopeless.

The federal government keeps wracking up record surpluses. I’m all for liquidating the federal debt and protecting social security. I call upon Washington to earmark some of that surplus to aid the least among us. To jumpstart their journey into the economic mainstream.

The opponents of affirmative action try to deny it, but the truth is that for generations, the government has given white Americans one jumpstart after another. They didn’t reach the middle class entirely under their own steam. The G.I. Bill, low-interest home loans, sparkling new schools in sparkling new segregated suburbs — those, too, were jumpstarts financed by the federal government.

Since education is the surest route to the middle class, the first jumpstart I propose is 21^st century schools for 21^st century children.

In 21^st century schools, every teacher would be qualified. They’d know their stuff and believe in their students. This is one of society’s toughest jobs, yet their first-year salaries average just $27,000 and only rise to about $40,000 after 16 years. We should do much better than that if we expect a fresh infusion of talent to enter teaching as a first choice instead of a fallback career.

Washington should stop bickering and mount a bipartisan drive to enlist a teaching corps second to none for America’s neediest schools. A new generation of educators whose starting salaries match those of young attorneys and MBAs, because they are equally valuable to society. To meet world-class standards, our children need world-class teachers and they need them now.

But we should demand a quid pro quo for paying teachers like real professionals. What do I mean? I say teachers should forsake those contract protections that hamstring the ability of principals to operate schools in the best interests of children. I’m talking about rigid tenure and seniority, the time-clock mindset and contract stipulations about class length and size.

In 21^st century schools, principals should have the authority to assemble the faculty, set performance standards in terms of student achievement, and dismiss any teachers who don’t measure up.

Last winter I spoke at the National Press Club. I called for every urban school to be "charterized." That comment set the right wing’s heart aflutter because they figured the next thing I’d endorse is school vouchers.

Wrong! Let me explain what I meant.

Successful schools typically are led by highly motivated principals and teachers, who are on a mission to make certain their youngsters do well academically. They usually are mavericks who spend much of their time fending off central office bureaucrats who try to stifle their creativity. These high performing educators cherish their autonomy and flourish because of it. They also relish accountability and use high standards to stay on course.

Every urban school should enjoy this combination of autonomy and accountability. That’s the essence of charter schools, when they work the way they should. Quality and accountability are essential features of the 21^st century school.

And let’s not overlook the physical plant itself. In most cities, many of the schools in poor neighborhoods are obsolete and overcrowded, mammoth and anonymous.

No business that’s competitive in this day and age would think of manufacturing its products in crumbling buildings using ancient machines, antiquated assembly-line methods and old-fashioned workers.

The 21^st century school should be a modern citadel of learning, not a moldy relic of days gone bye. And they should be much smaller. Just this month, Bank Street College released a study of small high schools in Chicago, schools with fewer than 400 students. Bank Street found that, compared with students in larger schools, these students earned higher grades, dropped out less, had higher attendance rates and failed fewer courses.

Every year, the government builds brand new prisons without giving it a second thought and replaces aging courthouses with magnificent new ones. Taxpayers even pick up part of the tab for new sports palaces. Surely, 21^st century schools for 21^st century students should rank at the top of America’s infrastructure priorities.

And lest we forget, the youngsters aren’t the only winners. Just like new prisons, a major school construction campaign will stimulate the economies of the very communities that still are saddled with high unemployment. As for the old schools, blow them up if they’re too far gone, the way HUD demolished those massive public housing projects. Or, since there’s an acute shortage of affordable housing, convert the salvageable buildings into mixed-income apartments and coops.

Unlike prisons, there are no losers when we build 21^st century schools. When the children win, everyone wins.

Let me turn now to the second jumpstart I want to propose tonight. This one would benefit folks who’ve already had at least one shot at the economic mainstream, but they failed to make it.

I have in mind the young moms who cannot get off of welfare because they lack the self-confidence and savvy to hold a steady job. The school dropouts who have so few skills and so many rough edges that employers won’t take a chance on them. Despite their shortcomings, society should invest in giving them a second chance. Contrary to all the cynicism about social programs, there really are approaches that work. And damn well at that.

Just giving them a dose of job training won’t do the trick. Making them to leave welfare won’t render them self-reliant. They need a more profoundly transformational experience that enables them to reinvent themselves. The kind of transformation the military has produced in young people for years.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, many of my classmates simply weren’t into school. Some of the boys were roughnecks who barely escaped reform school. As soon as they could, they dropped out of school and out of sight.

I remember encountering many of them years later. Somehow they had managed to enlist in the Army — or else they’d been drafted. Either way, they strutted about proudly in their uniforms. The Army had turned them around by teaching them a basic lesson of military life — if you do a job well, you get ahead.

That’s what convinced me in 1989 to ask the National Guard to create a residential youth corps for teenagers who had dropped out of school. That conversation spawned the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Corps.

It’s the most effective turnaround program I know of. The enrollees receive a heavy dose of academic and skills training. But that’s just for starters. They are steeped in leadership and "followership", so they learn how to take orders without taking offense.

The ChalleNGe Corps works. Seventy-three percent of these ex-school dropouts and expellees have earned their GED. Nearly three-quarters of them have landed solidly on their feet already. They’ve gotten jobs, enrolled in college or vocational school, joined the military, even signed up to finish high school.

So this second chance program really pays off. And it only costs $14,000 per enrollee.

Just as we’ve demilitarized some of what the military knows about high tech — to society’s eternal benefit — it’s time to demilitarize what the Pentagon knows about developing people.

I propose that the federal and state governments join forces to create an Opportunity Corps for young adults who need to get their lives on track. I see the Opportunity Corps being run by military alumni who have human development down to a science. It would operate on military bases for participants who can get away. Enrollees with children would put in long days while their youngsters stay in quality day care programs provided by the Corps. The curriculum would mirror the ChalleNGe Corps. As in the military, there’d be ranks so they learn to climb the ladder of opportunity, one rung at a time.

I envision the Opportunity Corps serving a quarter of a million participants annually. At roughly $15,000 per enrollee, the yearly tab would come to under $4 billion. That’s easily affordable in the short term if the bill is split between Washington and the states.

I recently heard a guest on the PBS Newshour say that for World War II veterans from poor and working class families, the G.I. Bill was the magic carpet to the American mainstream. The Opportunity Corps I’m proposing would become the 21^st century magic carpet for hundreds of thousands of fellow citizens who figured they never get another shot at the American Dream.

Even as the Urban League leads the charge into the economic mainstream, we will remain vigilant in asserting our civil rights and knocking down any barriers between black folk and the economic, social and political mainstream of America.

The antithesis of the economic mainstream is the criminal injustice system, where Jim Crow still sneaks around in some police departments, courtrooms and prisons.

You’ve read the headlines about the police, so I needn’t recount them. I’m proud as can be of the leadership role played by our affiliates and by the National Urban League. Do you realize that thanks to the concerted and constructive pressure brought by the Urban League around the country, the nation is slowly moving past denial and making some headway.

For instance, President Clinton has ordered federal departments to collect statistics on arrests in order to expose any racial profiling. And he has endorsed the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act, which the National Urban League had a major hand in drafting.

That isn’t the only part of the criminal justice system that’s been infected by Jim Crow. Earlier this spring, the Justice Policy Institute reported that in California, black and Latino teenagers are much more likely to be locked up — and for longer — than white teens who commit the same crimes. Another study, this one by Human Rights Watch, revealed that twice as many blacks as whites are being imprisoned for drug crimes, even though there are five times as many white drug users as black.

The result is mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders who aren’t a danger to anyone. In New York State, for instance, first-time offenders convicted of possessing as little as four ounces of heroin or cocaine can draw stiffer prison sentences than murderers and rapists? That’s absurd.

Happily, here in New York State, Chief Judge Judith Kaye announced recently that the courts will start sending small-time drug abusers to treatment programs instead of sticking them behind bars. The federal government and the governors should follow suit.

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Judge Kay’s enlightened policy will detour upwards of 10,000 nonviolent offenders from prison annually and save taxpayers about half a billion dollars each year. That alone is enough to finance 36,000 slots in the Opportunity Corps.

By far the ugliest example of Jim Crow at work is the way we handle capital punishment, where minorities draw the short straw more often than whites. It’s barbaric for the state to kill someone who isn’t a mortal enemy.

The folks on death row may not be angels. But they are children of God. That’s why repealing capital punishment -- or at least imposing a nationwide moratorium on further executions -- is warranted on moral grounds alone. The only exception I’d make is for that mythical Jim Crow, who I’d happily strap in the electric chair myself.

There’s a pragmatic reason as well, which the recent execution of Gary Graham in Texas really brought home. No one would ever mistake him for an angel. Even so, there were bona fide questions about the competence of his defense attorney and the existence of evidence that wasn’t introduced and that might have cast a reasonable doubt on his guilt.

Recently, I devoted my To Be Equal column to this unsettling case. I asked why Governor Bush and the Texas parole board felt they had to kill Graham when it wasn’t clear he was guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt.

A law professor friend of mine called to say that while he shared my sentiments about capital punishment, I was wrong about the burden of proof in criminal cases. It’s "beyond a reasonable doubt," he reminded me, not beyond a shadow of a doubt.

His comment set me to thinking. In civil cases, where essentially all that’s at stake is your money or your property, a plaintiff must prove the claim against the defendant by the "preponderance of the evidence." That’s sort of like saying you need at least a 51-49 split in favor of the plaintiff.

In criminal cases, where one’s basic liberty is at risk, the rule is "beyond a reasonable doubt." That’s the case whether the charge is shoplifting or serial murder. Whether the punishment is community service or the electric chair.

But I believe that standard is too lax when someone’s life is at stake. Politicians know full well that some innocent people are being executed. But most of them lack the courage to say what error rate they find acceptable.

So I challenge our politicians instead to muster the courage to legislate a tougher burden of proof in capital cases. Require that judges and juries find the defendant guilty "beyond any doubt whatsoever." If those who pass judgment aren’t that convinced by the evidence, then they’d have the option of finding the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Under those circumstances, the punishment would be anything short of execution. But the government could kill someone only if there was a finding of guilt beyond any doubt whatsoever.

The bottom line goal of black folk in the 21^st century is economic self-reliance, economic parity and economic power. We seek fairness and justice so that African Americans stand on equal footing with all Americans once and for all.

Come November we must make certain that the presidential candidates get our message loud and clear. What we think about a candidate’s philosophy, about the kind of Supreme Court justices he’s likely to appoint, matters little in the comfort of our living room. They must hear us loud and clear in the voting booth.

I have issued Ten Opportunity Commandments that politicians should follow so we can transform the "have-nots" of America into "haves." Use these commandments to judge whether the candidates are serious about our agenda.

And remember the first law of politics: The winner won’t respect us the morning after Election Day if he doesn’t fear losing our vote the night before.

That, my friends, is my take on the State of Black America today. What will be the State of Black America a generation from now? I’m not clairvoyant. The best I can do is dream.

To borrow the title of Brian Lanker’s soul-stirring book, I dream a world where every black child in America can read and write, reason and compute, and navigate the Internet.

I dream a world where cyberspace is the first truly integrated neighborhood on earth — or wherever out there it is.

I dream a world where every African-American adult has a good job or a thriving business and is situated solidly in the economic mainstream.

I dream a world where we really start saving and then stashing much of our nest egg in the stock market instead of sticking it all under the mattress.

I dream a world where we’re cracking the glass ceiling daily and owning more and more mainstream businesses, like Wittnauer Watches, that move us from the sidelines to the center stage of American commerce.

I dream a world where the playing field finally is level. Where our economic vital signs are identical to everyone else’s — our unemployment rate and our poverty rate, and, yes, our homeownership rate and our prosperity rate.

I dream that the next time the President of the United States proclaims it’s morning in America, she will mean that we’ve finally become One America.

I dream a world where every black woman and black man, a world where every black child has arrived at the destination we charted when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. That destination is the American Dream.

That is my dream for the State of Black America a generation from now. That is the path we must follow to reach the economic mainstream in the 21^st century. That is my charge tonight to our great Urban League movement on this, our 90^th anniversary, in this, the city of our birth.

Sisters and brothers. Family members, partners and friends -- I hereby declare the first annual conference of the 21^st century Urban League movement, open for business.