The new face of the NAACP

The selection came after a "contentious debate that lasted long into the night," according to CNN contributor Roland Martin, who spoke to board members on Saturday.

When the 34-21 vote was announced, "no one clapped or celebrated," Martin reported, according to the account of a board member who attended the meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. Jealous fills a position that has been vacant for more than a year. Bruce Gordon, a retired Verizon executive, resigned as executive director in March 2007.

"I'm excited," Jealous told The Associated Press. "I think that it's a real affirmation that this organization is willing to invest in the future, to invest in the ideas and the leadership of the generation that is currently raising black children in this country."

Born and raised in California, Jealous holds a bachelor's degree in political science from Columbia University and a master's degree in comparative social research from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Prior to coming to the NAACP, he served as President of the Rosenberg Foundation- a private independent institution that supports advocacy efforts to make significant improvements in the lives of California's working families and recent immigrants. He was the fourth person to hold the position since the Foundation was founded in 1935.

Jealous was also director of the U.S. human rights program at Amnesty International, where he led the group's efforts to pass federal legislation against prison rape, rebuild public consensus against racial profiling in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, and expose the widespread sentencing of children to life without the possibility of parole, according to the NAACP.

Racial profiling may be a priority issue for the organization. Jealous is the lead author of the 2004 report Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States, according to the NAACP.

Jealous previously served as executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), an industry group of more than 200 black newspapers nationwide, where he rebuilt the group's news service and instituted the creation of new software that enabled dozens of local papers to publish online.

He had also served as managing editor of the Jackson Advocate, Mississippi's oldest black newspaper. He began his career as an organizer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, according to the NAACP.

"This is the century when white people will become a minority in this country," said Jealous. "What that means is right now, we need to have a clear picture of where we're headed and work together diligently with Latinos, Native Americans, Asians and progressive white groups as if our collective future depends on it."