Two days before the oldest and best-known U.S. civil rights group holds its yearly convention in Milwaukee, black leaders in the city say their community is being torn apart from the inside.

Civil rights leaders like 57-year-old Prentice McKinney, who fought to free Milwaukee's blacks from the ghetto, say gangs, drugs and violence have left those who still live in the nation's urban cores in fear of the next generation.

The struggles over segregated schools and housing in Milwaukee began in 1963, when marches and civil disobedience were organized by Roman Catholic priest James Groppi.

Marchers who crossed an invisible line were met by mobs of angry whites. Three people died in the summer of 1967, 100 were injured and 1,700 arrested. Groppi and the NAACP Youth Council later began 200 consecutive days of marches aimed at breaking down the laws that forced blacks to live in ghettos.