Too many organizations – social, political and cultural – that reached peaks of national recognition in the ’60s and ’70s have been unable to rise to the challenges of the present, a present that in large measure is due to what they did back then.

In the case of the NAACP and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, we see one organization that acknowledges it needs to take a dramatic step into the 21st century and another whose attempt to pursue “progressive social change” is an embarrassment to the legacy of a movement that galvanized so many people who went on to pursue worthy causes without using the Panthers’ methods.

In their philosophies and approaches, the two organizations could not have been more dissimilar in the ’60s: The Panthers, while providing free health care and food to poor people, embraced violence and the strident language of revolution. The NAACP, while no pushover, worked within the system to obtain and enforce civil rights using more traditional protest methods.

After years of a one-step-forward, two-steps-back cha-cha, the NAACP has looked beyond the traditional leadership of preachers and politicians and tapped a retired business executive, Bruce Gordon, as president. Back in the day, that kind of establishment leadership might have been suspect among the people now being supported by and courted by the NAACP. The choice of Gordon bodes well.

But I am flummoxed at the direction of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, which is the guardian of the Panthers’ legacy. To raise money for “progressive social change,” it is getting into the condiments business with a hot sauce called Burn Baby Burn – a phrase associated not just with disco music but more relevantly with the call of the streets during urban riots. It is also planning to sell a “retro” line of clothing pitched at the hip-hop generation and those who want to relive the good old, bad 1960s.

It’s one thing for Bobby Seale, a Panthers’ founder, to promote barbecue, as he has done as an author/chef; it’s another for the institution representing the Panthers’ goals for the liberation of black people to be promoting its “revolutionary” brand of hot sauce. Is this saying all that talk about freedom for people of color had such limited appeal over the long haul that everything comes back to appealing to people’s – especially black people’s – interest in good (not necessarily healthy) food?

The NAACP, to its credit, has never gone so far toward triviality.

Gordon notes that in America “we face subtler and more complex threats to equality in education, employment and other areas that are harder to recognize and just as hard to overcome.” He added that his goal is to help the NAACP to “continue adapting to this new reality.” I’d be surprised if he didn’t foster a relationship with the Bush administration that has eluded the NAACP throughout the Bush II years.

If Gordon can do for the NAACP what he did for Verizon as an executive, then the NAACP might just thrive – with its dignity intact.