SENSE OF UNITY PERVADES NAACP NATIONAL MEETINGS.

Byline: Associated Press 

Boarding their planes, trains and automobiles to return home Sunday, NAACP members from around the country left their annual meeting with an unaccustomed sense of unity - sorely lacking in the organization's recent national gatherings.

``I feel very good about the direction we are headed in,'' board member Julian Bond said. ``We can get back to the business of civil rights.''

In recent years, civil rights battles have held a low priority on the NAACP agenda. More important for many of the group's leaders included infighting over which faction should run the organization and how to shift blame to opponents for financial disasters.

No one can say the NAACP, with 350,000 members, 2,200 local branches and 64 policy-setting national board members, is finished with internal conflict. But most leaders agreed an era of good feelings might be taking hold.

``We have undercurrents or ripples of problems, but things are much, much better,'' said Rupert Richardson, national board member from Louisiana. ``Some people are still concerned that Mfume doesn't know how the NAACP operates, but he's a quick study.''

Despite such misgivings among some, members said the meeting seemed to solidify Kweisi Mfume himself as NAACP leader in the year since he announced a year ago he was leaving his congressional seat in Maryland to take over the organization.

NAACP insiders expressed doubt last year about Mfume's style, which friends call businesslike and opponents aloof and autocratic. Many thought it would represent too wrenching a change.