Another Leader of Rights Group Will Step Down

Ralph Neas, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, announced Wednesday that he will resign the post he has held for nearly 14 years.

Neas announced his resignation less than two weeks after Benjamin L. Hooks departed as chairman of the conference, which serves as the legislative arm of the civil rights movement.

Conference members include 185 national organizations representing minorities, women, homosexuals, religious groups, disabled people, senior citizens and labor groups.

Neas, 48, has led the group’s work on Capitol Hill and at the White House since 1981. He said he would practice and teach law, write and do some consulting after stepping down next spring.

Neas and Hooks served mainly during Republican administrations that were not particularly sympathetic to the causes they espoused.

“The most frustrating aspect of the Reagan-Bush presidencies is that they forced the nation, the Congress and the leadership conference to refight the civil rights battles that had been won in the 1960s and ‘70s,” Neas said.

“Those battles were won once again, but everyone had to devote an extraordinary amount of time and energy and resources to waging these rear-guard actions,” he said.