Washington ? The NAACP’s new leader intends to hold President Barack Obama accountable for his promises about civil rights regardless of Obama’s status as the first black occupant of the White House.

“The president being black gives us no advantage,” NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press, adding that Obama’s background as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer may make him more receptive to the NAACP’s agenda.

Jealous said he expects “the traditional relationship” that presidents have had with the NAACP: “We will be the people at the end of the day who help make him do what he knows he should do. We will help create the room for (Obama) to fulfill, I think, his own aspirations for his presidency.”

“If he aspires to be the next Abraham Lincoln, I aspire to be his Frederick Douglass,” Jealous said, referring to the slave-turned-abolitionist who pressed a cautious Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Jealous outlined several issues for Obama to address during his first year in office: ensuring fair distribution of federal bailout funds, programs and contracts; double-digit black unemployment; and ensuring that minority children have access to good schools.