BALTIMORE – Kweisi Mfume, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, announced yesterday that he is stepping down after a nearly nine-year tenure in which he helped rescue the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights group from debt and scandal.

Mr. Mfume, 56, said he wanted to spend more time with his family, namely his 14-year-old son. He became misty-eyed at a news conference as he described how the son – the youngest of his six children – has come to know a world of airplanes and news conferences for most of his life.

“I don’t want to miss another basketball game. I want to sew on his varsity letter on his sweater,” Mr. Mfume said of his son, who recently made the basketball team. “I just need a break. I need a vacation.”

Mr. Mfume, whose adopted West African name translates to “conquering son of kings,” began his career as a dashiki-clad popular radio talk show host and political activist in the 1970s and transformed himself into one of the nation’s foremost civil rights leaders.

Mr. Mfume inherited an organization tarnished by scandal and burdened by a $3.2 million debt when he took over as president of the Naacp in early 1996.He is credited with steering it into an era of stability and growth with corporate style management techniques.

“For the last nine years, I’ve had what I believe is both the honor and the privilege to help revive and to help restore this great organization,” said Mr. Mfume, a former congressman and Baltimore city council member. “In my heart of hearts, I know the job has been done.”

Shortly before his announcement, Mr. Mfume said he received a phone call from senior White House adviser Karl Rove, who extended best wishes on behalf of President Bush, who was traveling.

Mr. Mfume also spoke with other civil rights and political leaders, including Maryland Lietenant Governor Michael Steele, an African-American Republican, and the Reverend Jesse Jackson. “Each place he left, he left better off. He came at a time when the organization needed morale and credibility, and he brought both,” Mr. Jackson said.

The organization still faces many challenges.

Last month, the Naacp’s chairman, Julian Bond, announced that its tax-exempt status is under review by the government in an investigation he contends stems from a speech he gave that criticized President Bush. Mr. Bond said IRS agents were investigating his keynote address July 11 at the organization’s annual convention in Philadelphia.

In September, the group launched an advertising campaign aimed at combating what officials describe as stagnant membership growth. The civil rights group, founded in 1909, wants to increase membership by 20%, Mr. Mfume said at the time.