When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People last convened in Houston 11 years ago, white Americans were retrenching and blacks were in crisis. Rodney King had been beaten by Los Angeles police that spring. Liberal stalwart Thurgood Marshall was being replaced on the Supreme Court by the conservative Clarence Thomas. Congress was debating civil rights legislation under threat of executive veto. And still unknown to members of the nation's oldest and largest civil rights group, a train wreck was barreling toward them. Near-bankruptcy, sexual scandal, catastrophic mismanagement and almost wholesale abandonment by foundations and corporate backers all...