When the NAACP's conference ended here last week, civil rights leaders left behind a portrait of black men in crisis. Too many young black men, said the civil rights group, are underemployed, alternately feared and reviled, and living at risk.

Now come the men of Sigma Pi Phi, a once-secret black fraternity that celebrates the professional and material success of black men. Known as the Boule (pronounced \o7 boo-lay\f7 ), the group is here this week for its biennial meeting and its own look at "An Agenda for the Black Male in the '90s."

It was an invitation-only, tuxedoed gathering of some of the most prominent and powerful black men in America, who say they are struggling to define their responsibility to other black men, the ones the NAACP calls "endangered."

(\o7 Boule\f7 is a Greek word, designating a council of community leaders who advised kings. The reference, members of the 3,000-man, worldwide fraternity, is highly intentional.)

The roster of members here this week reads like a Who's Who among blacks: U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ron Brown, Mayor Tom Bradley, NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Hooks.

Like Yale's Skull and Bones secret society to which George Bush belongs, the Boule has been criticized by some as a social anachronism, and has challenged members to change its image.

Incoming president Dr. Benjamin Major, a retired San Francisco physician, said he is aware of charges that the group is more interested in socializing and congratulating itself on its enviable exclusivity than it is in making a substantial contribution to the rest of black America.

"Until eight or 10 years ago, we were just what we were perceived to be," said Major, who wants to make the group's social action committee more aggressive.

"We don't want to appear as if we were remaining above the problems of most black people. We know we didn't get here solely by the dint of our own hard work," he added. "We owe a lot of people, and we have to give back to our brothers and sisters."

The ballroom of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel where the Boule opened its meeting last weekend may be only a freeway away from South-Central Los Angeles, but it was light-years away in mood.

As 1,300 members and wives skirted the buffet tables to clasp hands and embrace, a black-tie band played jazz favorites from the 1940s and '50s.