CIVIL-RIGHTS BATTLE NOT CLEAR TODAY.

Byline: EARL OFARI HUTCHINSON

LAST spring, immigration-rights supporters loudly demanded that civil-rights groups take part in immigration-rights marches and endorse immigration-reform bills in Congress. They branded the immigration battle the new civil-rights movement, and insisted that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive, he would have backed up their claim.

Although it's risky to say what King would have done on that score, it's almost certain that given his passionate support of the mostly Latino-led farmworkers' movement in California -- and his glowing praise of Cesar Chavez -- he would have regarded the immigration reform fight as a bona fide civil-rights battle.

And that would get him in hot water today with many blacks and some civil-rights groups who take great offense at comparing the immigration-reform struggle to the 1960s civil-rights movement. That's just one glaring sign of how things have changed in the nearly four decades since King's murder.

In the 1960s, things were much simpler for civil-rights leaders. Their fight was against bigoted sheriffs and mobs. It was classic good-versus- evil. The gory news scenes of baton-wielding racist Southern cops, fire hoses, police dogs, and Klan violence unleashed against peaceful black protesters sickened many white Americans. All, except the most rabid racists, considered racial segregation immoral and indefensible, and the civil-rights leaders were hailed as martyrs and American heroes in the fight for justice.

Then, blacks had the sympathy and goodwill of millions of whites, politicians and business leaders. But those days are long gone.

Instead civil-rights leaders today must confront the indifference, even outright hostility, of many white and nonwhite Americans to affirmative action, increased spending on social programs and civil-rights marches. They confront a Bush administration that the overwhelming majority of blacks regard as an inherent enemy of civil rights, and which failed to protect poor black Americans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

That points to another challenge that King had only begun to wrestle with in his last days: The plight of the legions of urban black poor.

After the strides of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s, many of its leaders fell victim to their own success and failure. When they broke down the racially restricted doors of corporations, government agencies and universities, it was middle-class blacks -- not the poor -- who rushed on through.

Four decades later, there are now two black Americas.

First is the fat, rich and comfortable black America of Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson, Bill Cosby, Condoleezza Rice, Denzel Washington and the legions of millionaire black athletes and entertainers, businesspersons and professionals. They have grabbed a big slice of America's pie.

Then there's the black America of the poor, which is fragmented and politically rudderless. Lacking competitive technical skills and professional training, and shunned by many middle-class black leaders, they have been shoved even further to the margins of American society.

The chronic problems of gang and drug violence, family breakdown, police abuse, incarceration, HIV and AIDS, and abysmally failing inner-city public schools have made things even worse for poor blacks.

The political rise of black conservatives and black evangelicals -- evident in the furious internal fights among blacks over gay rights and abortion -- has tormented and perplexed civil-rights leaders. They have tried to strike a halting, tenuous balance between their liberalism and the social conservatism of many blacks.

The endorsement of an anti-gay march by one of King's daughters a few years ago was one more instance of a troubling issue that King didn't have to deal with.

Civil-rights leaders will continue to walk a tightrope between the competing and sometimes contradictory needs of black conservatives, gay- rights backers and immigration-reform advocates, while still trying to be a voice for the black poor. These are weighty challenges that would perplex and frustrate King if he were alive. It was so much simpler when the challenge was water hoses, police dogs and Bull Connor.

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Ateja Hordge, 5, waits with other students from Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School before marching in the MLK Parade on Thursday in Phoenix. Monday is the official holiday honoring King.

Tom Tingle/The Arizona Republic