Heads turn and murmuring begins when the distinguished, silver-haired African American walks through Harold and Belle's, a popular Creole restaurant in southwest Los Angeles.
A professor looks up from her shrimp and crawfish etouffee. Genteel little old ladies dressed to the nines for lunch grab at his hands. Diners approach his table before he can savor the shrimp, crab, smoked beef sausage, ham and chicken thickening his file gumbo.
"Isn't that John Mack from the Urban League?" a diner asks. "I know him from TV."
Urban League -- A photo caption in Monday's Calendar section with an article about John Mack's retirement as president of the Los Angeles Urban League misidentified Marc H. Morial, president and chief executive of the National Urban League, as Mack's son, Tony Mack.
They know him from images like these: famously leading then-President George H. W. Bush on a tour after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a photo-op seen round the world; calling for the resignation of then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates; showing Prince Charles the Los Angeles Urban League Automotive Training Center on Crenshaw Boulevard; hosting his friend Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa, who held his first post-victory press conference at that same center, a partnership between the league and Toyota that resulted from the riots.
Now 68, a star player in myriad powerful arenas, Mack is scheduled to retire as president of the Los Angeles Urban League at the end of this month, causing a seismic shift in Southern California's African American leadership.
No black leader outside the realm of politics has his insider relationships with the region's corporate movers and shakers or elite African Americans, liberal and conservative (it was a black Republican who recommended to the White House that Mack escort the first President Bush around L.A. after the riots). During his nearly 36 years in the position, he has seen the city through all kind of changes: the election of a black mayor, growth in the number of African Americans in key and influential positions, the renaissance of the Crenshaw district, development in South L.A., a burgeoning black-Latino political coalition -- as well as escalating tensions between Latinos and African Americans over jobs and at schools, and even for gang turf.
As he prepares to leave the L.A. affiliate of one of the nation's oldest and most influential civil rights organizations, he cautions that "African Americans live in two worlds. We have had a steadily growing middle class. Look at the African Americans who live in View Park, Baldwin Hills, Lafayette Square and Ladera Heights -- and others who have moved out.
"But for everyone who's moved up, we have more and more who are still languishing in poverty
