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Linda
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Linda
Post Number: 82
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 10:30 am: | 
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SCLC in search of leader
By CAMERON McWHIRTER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 11/11/04
Board members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference huddled behind
closed doors at a downtown Atlanta hotel Thursday, trying to pick someone to
lead the troubled civil rights organization back from chaos.
The once-venerated group is plagued by debt, back taxes, internal squabbles
and dwindling membership. And this week, its top leader announced he was
quitting and blasted the organization's leaders in letters and memos he
shared with the press.
"We have become our own worst enemy," now ex-SCLC president, the Rev. Fred
Shuttlesworth, wrote in one letter, "acting no differently than scores of
others whom we have outwardly challenged over the years."
Observers both within and outside the organization have said they are not
sure the 47-year-old SCLC can survive.
The meetings at the Marriott Marquis came one day after Shuttlesworth
produced internal SCLC correspondence from the past year that shows an
organization sapped by fierce infighting and chronic financial problems. He
wrote in one letter that he had hoped to help return the former glory of the
SCLC, which was co-founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Shuttlesworth attacked the board's "gross neglect of financial
responsibilities, including taxes, fund-raising and employee-related
matters."
Neither Vice Chairman Raleigh Trammell nor Vice President Charles Steele,
the two de facto leaders of the organization, would speak to the
Journal-Constitution, said SCLC spokeswoman Patricia D'Abreau.
The board meeting, which Trammell and Steele attended, went on into the
night Thursday. The meeting was scheduled to resume this morning, and
D'Abreau said there would be a news conference at 2 p.m. today to address
the crisis.
Shuttlesworth quit after he was suspended last week along with SCLC Chairman
Claud Young of Detroit. No reason was given for the suspensions.
"I'm not going to be in a charade," Shuttlesworth said in an interview.
Young's status is not clear. He was at his Detroit office Thursday but did
not return phone calls.
Shuttlesworth, 82, took over as interim president of the SCLC in 2003 after
Martin Luther King III quit following fights with the board. In its heyday,
the SCLC ‹ guided by King's father ‹ led the battle against segregation and
helped secure passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting
Rights Act.
Shuttlesworth, a Cincinnati pastor and longtime civil rights activist who
helped start the SCLC, said he agreed to take over last year to help the
organization regain its prestige.
Most of Shuttlesworth's anger in his letters was directed at Trammell, vice
chairman of the SCLC and head of an SCLC chapter in Dayton, Ohio.
Shuttlesworth accused Trammell, also a pastor, of spending SCLC money
without board approval and undermining changes Shuttlesworth and others
tried to make.
"I pray that when historians evaluate your efforts, I hope they may not find
it necessary to call them Trammell's Folly or Trammell's Tragedy,"
Shuttlesworth wrote.
Trammell, through D'Abreau, said he would not comment on Shuttlesworth's
specific assertions.
Slurs and name-calling
The level of personal enmity between the men was evident in documents that
Shuttlesworth made public. In one memo purportedly from Trammell, he
apologized for cursing at Shuttlesworth but then called the SCLC president a
racial slur and wrote, "You are still a bastard."
Shuttlesworth claimed the SCLC board promised him a $10,000-a-month salary
to be president and chief executive officer. An annual salary of $120,000
would have overwhelmed the SCLC annual budget. Total salaries, employee
benefits and payroll taxes for all SCLC staff members for 2002, the last
year the group has filed with the Internal Revenue Service, were about
$225,000.
Shuttlesworth was paid nothing, however, "because of so many loose ends and
bills beyond measure," he wrote. He claimed to have loaned the organization
thousands of dollars. A portion of the money was paid back, he said.
Shuttlesworth's exit caps a bad year for the SCLC. In April, the SCLC board,
led by Young and Trammell, sued former longtime SCLC President Joseph
Lowery, contending that he had set up a sweetheart deal to lease space from
the SCLC for his wife's nonprofit organization for $1 a year.
Lowery denies any wrongdoing and argues that he had full approval of the
board. The lawsuit, still pending, has caused turmoil among SCLC board
members and black civil rights leaders in Atlanta.
The board promised election of a new president this summer at the SCLC
convention in Florida. At the convention, however, police had to be called
to keep the peace as factions fought bitterly during the voting process.
Delegates ended up choosing none of the announced candidates. Instead, they
elected Shuttlesworth, then interim, to be president for a one-year term.
Shortly after the convention, the board gave Shuttlesworth approval to fire
two high-ranking SCLC staffers. He accused them of conspiring to take over
the organization. Then in October, Shuttlesworth fired another longtime
staffer, the Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn, a cousin of King's widow, Coretta
Scott King.
Shuttlesworth claimed Osburn had run up SCLC debts. In a rare move, the
board overruled Shuttlesworth and then suspended him and Young. At the time,
Osburn described the internal political situation as "all-out war."
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 799
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, November 13, 2004 - 11:23 am: |
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We need new strategies across the board--this is the 21st Century and the whole thing is being run by appealing to the lowest motivations of the people. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 2075
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, November 14, 2004 - 06:50 am: |
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Linda,
As I read what you posted, I can't find any reason why the SCLC should continue to exist. Because it appears to be a woefully tattered emblem of its storied past. |
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