In a time of rising real-estate prices, post-September 11 adulation of New York City’s Finest, and a ubiquitous Starbucks culture, many New Yorkers have forgotten a not-so-distant era when racial animus simmered below the surface – and sometimes boiled over. Police shootings, mostly of young black men, were far too common, tensions between blacks and Korean immigrants and blacks and Jews were front page fodder, and you could set your calendar by boycotts and marches.

The Reverend Herbert D. Daughtry Sr. was always there, on the front lines, arms locked with other black activist clergy – racial agitators, according to some. They shouted “No Justice, No Peace!” and they didn’t just play the race card, they dealt the deck.

More than 13 years after the Crown Heights riots, which signaled a nadir in municipal race relations and ended the last Democrat mayoralty, Rev. Daughtry is now widely viewed as a benign elder statesman. Some people still refer to him as “inflammatory,” but many others now consider his to be a reasoned voice.

Rev. Daughtry, slim and spry at 73, chuckles at how he is now perceived. “They think I’ve lost my fangs and it’s time for me to go out to pasture,” he said this week during a far-ranging interview with The New York Sun at his House of the Lord Church in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. “But I’m not ready yet.”

Ready or not, here come the encomiums. Rev. Daughtry is being feted to morrow at a doubleheader gospel concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, Mayor Dinkins, and the actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis are a few of the luminaries who are scheduled to pay tribute to the man referred to by many as “the People’s Pastor.”

“We wanted to give him some flowers while he could smell them,” said Leah Daughtry, 41, the minister’s eldest child, who is chief-of-staff for the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C.

Most of the proceeds from the big-ticket event are earmarked for the church’s building fund and the organization that administers its community services.

It’s been a long haul for Rev. Daughtry, who was born in Savannah, Ga., and recalls being taunted when his family moved to Brooklyn when he was a child. “When someone makes fun of your clothes, your first instinct is to tear theirs off,” Rev. Daughtry said.

The taunts were followed by a decade of fighting, drug use, and criminal activities, which eventually landed him an extensive stretch in prison.

“Allah saved Malcolm,” Rev. Daughtry said of the jailhouse conversion of Malcolm X. “Jesus Christ saved me.”

Once released, Rev. Daughtry became the fourth generation in his family to minister. He and his wife of 42 years, Karen, have four children and one grandson. “I told my children that going to college was non-negotiable,” Rev. Daughtry said, “but they could pick the college or university they wanted to attend.” Two selected Dartmouth College, one the University of Chicago, and the youngest picked Syracuse University.

A gala would have been out of the question a decade ago, when Rev. Daughtry was regularly accused of being anti-Semitic. “The papers reported that 50 chasidim had beaten this brother, Arthur Rhodes, to a pulp,” he recalled, “so what I said is, when we organize our patrol and when men meet men, then we will see what the people in the long black coats will do.” Rev. Daughtry still maintains that his statement was not directed at Jews and wasn’t offensive or aggressive.

In the foreword to Rev. Daughtry’s 1997 book, “No Monopoly on Suffering: Blacks and Jews in Crown Heights (and Elsewhere),” the scholar Cornel West wrote: “We know that any wholesale critique of the vicious legacy of white supremacy includes Americans of all colors, including Jews and Blacks. Any principled opposition to xenophobia requires wrestling with these evils in our own souls and society. Yet how easy it is for the mainstream media to demonize Black leaders who target American racism in white and Jewish communities. All too often, the stigmas of Black racist demagogue and Black anti-Semite are attached for life.”

Indeed, Rev. Daughtry said that some of his Jewish friends, such as Wilbur Levin, the Kings County clerk, told him that he should ignore the accusations, but he now considers that to be the wrong approach. If the anti-Semite tag has dogged him, though, Rev. Daughtry seems unfazed and said he continues to level criticism where he sees injustice. Still, the rhetoric has been toned down, and where once he might have been in the street marching, the septuagenarian is just as likely to be in the boardroom negotiating. Bucking the widespread impulse to resist large-scale development automatically, Rev. Daughtry has thrown his considerable support behind Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development project in downtown Brooklyn, with its plan for a basketball arena to which the New Jersey Nets would move.

“I’ve thrown enough rocks at trains moving down the tracks. This train, I not only want ride it, but I want to help put it together before it leaves the station,” Rev. Daughtry said. He is seeking a legally binding community benefits agreement for the project.

On this first Sunday of the new year at the House of the Lord Church, colorful head-wraps bob in unison as the modest congregation responds with full-throated amens as Rev. Daughtry extols the faithful to “Come alive in 2005!” The clergyman is adamant that one has to forge one’s own path. If one wants a suitable “house,” one has to erect it – don’t leave one’s life in the hands of others.

“Your vision can’t always be enjoyed or understood by them,” Rev. Daughtry said. “They’re not bad people, they just can’t see it.”

Early on, said Rev. Daughtry, many couldn’t see his vision, but he is certain his legacy will be validated. “Overall it’s the synthesis of fundamental biblical faith with Afro-centrism and the struggle for human rights,” he said. “On my headstone they can put, ‘Tee Hee, I Told You So!’ “