Shipp: Time to take the next step past civil rights era.

This week Bill Shipp -- never one to mince words -- has some courageous advice:

The civil rights era was a defining time for this country. We are a better people today because of what brave men and women did in the 1950s and 1960s. We also are fortunate leaders of the movement were dedicated to nonviolence. Violence-bent organizers might have bequeathed a bloodier legacy.

Having said that, I believe it is time that we moved on. The civil rights era is like the Civil War. It is fading into history.

The Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council have disappeared. Jim Crow is dead. Black people in the South are no longer required to explain the Constitution's commerce clause in order to vote. Black elected officials abound. An African-American middle class is expanding exponentially.

A new generation of black leaders - perhaps a generation who never experienced the degradation of segregation laws - may be needed to break the black predisposition to venerate images and ignore present-day realities. Holding officials to an equal standard of accountability would be a good first step.