The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the oldest civil rights group in the United States, is celebrating its centennial. The year couldn’t have been better considering the fact that an African-American managed to go as far as becoming America’s president, but the NAACP leaders decided to seize the opportunity of this celebration and ask some provoking questions. The most important of them: what relevance the NAACP has, if any, in the Obama age.

The NAACP’s and the social environment are very different from 100 years ago when six black men were murdered and their houses were burned in Springfield, Illinois.

However, the group’s president, Benjamin Jealous, said there still are things to fight for and issues to be solved so the NAACP’s mission is the same. Things are different today, but not that different said Mr. Jealous. There still are too many black men killed in the prime of their lives. They are no longer being hanged in trees or burned. Nowadays they are being put in body bags, the group’s 36-year-old CEO said.

“Our children now can go to the same schools, but too often it's the same poorly resourced school," he added.

Mr. Jealous said that, although Barack Obama has become the U.S. President, “the ultimate barrier” as he called it, there still is a battle to be fought in order to get equal treatment for the whole group.

However, there are NAACP veterans who question the group’s relevance in times like these.

"The organization needs to assess its place in history right now," said J. Whyatt Mondesire, a NAACP board member from Philadelphia. According to Mr. Mondesire, the group must first of all understand what it accomplished during its existence and then reassess its priorities and the problems it plans to address from now on.

The main question – about the group’s relevance – was probably answered best by the NAACP CEO. Mr. Jealous said, with a touch of sarcasm, that the NAACP is not the National Association for the Advancement of a Colored Person; it is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Mr. Jealous already began charting the NAACP’s future and priorities. The group’s priorities are best seen in the report Mr. Jealous released yesterday. In it, the NAACP asks the Obama administration and Congress for: funds for education, the establishment of a nine-month moratorium on foreclosure, to ensure that the stimulus package money is spent fairly and to guarantee fair hiring practices for new jobs.

The NAACP report also addressed the issue of protection for black homeowners from predatory lending. Mr. Jealous said lawmakers should pass legislation to protect black homeowners.