Obama win not to supplant civil rights campaign

By Matthew Bigg

ATLANTA (Reuters) - If Barack Obama wins November's election and becomes the first black president in U.S. history, will an older generation of civil rights leaders go out of business?

On the surface, this might be expected as political inclusion has been a key goal of the civil rights movement for half a century, back to a time when millions of black Americans in the South could not vote.

But black leaders argue that problems like discrimination, police brutality and unfairness in the legal system are still rife and they remain committed to fighting them.

Beyond that, many African-Americans lag behind the overall population in social standards, like health, education, income and employment, and protest remains an effective way to bring change, as it was during the civil rights heyday, they say.

Although blacks account for around 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black, according to U.S. census data, and the number of blacks in prison has quadrupled since 1980.

The income of an average black family is 58 percent of that of an average white family's, according to a 2007 study.

The issue of the different roles played by Obama, who is the Democratic presidential candidate, and civil rights leaders came into focus this month after comments by veteran black campaigner Jesse Jackson on Obama.

Jackson, 66, said Obama, 46, was "talking down to black people" and said he wanted to cut the Illinois senator's "nuts" off. He quickly apologized for the crude remark, which was recorded in a TV studio without his knowledge.