SCLC Removes 6 Members as Strife Continues

Board member and spokesman Bernard Lafayette said six board members of the civil rights organization were removed and replaced during a board of directors meeting at the SCLC's downtown Atlanta headquarters. Five were removed for cause -- including continuing to act as officers of the organization and to use SCLC funds -- and one due to illness.

The SCLC has spent the past several months in court as two factions battle for control of the organization, which splintered last fall after allegations surfaced that its chairman and treasurer mismanaged nearly $570,000. Federal and state authorities have been looking into the matter, and an internal investigation is also ongoing.

Meanwhile, both factions have sought to maintain power. They held separate meetings hundreds of miles apart last month, with each group claiming to be the SCLC's board.

Chairman Raleigh Trammell and Treasurer Spiver Gordon were voted out by the board of directors in April, along with four other board members who also have been replaced. Most of the board members who were voted out are supporting Trammell and Gordon.

The Rev. Markel Hutchins, who was appointed to the board of directors by Trammell in January but is not recognized as a member by the Atlanta group, said Tuesday that the Atlanta faction's decision to remove board members was illegal and against the SCLC's constitution.

"It's against everything that is good and decent," Hutchins said. "This is nothing more than an attempt to take over the organization and seize control of the legacy of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the legacy of Dr. King."

The SCLC is planning its annual convention in August, and plans to install Bernice King at that meeting. She was elected in October, but has remained silent amid the legal wrangling. Her brother, Martin Luther King III, is an SCLC board member and former president of the organization.

Their father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., was SCLC's founding president, serving from the organization's creation in 1957 until he was assassinated in 1968. Its longest-serving president, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, retired in 1997.

The SCLC, which was at the center of pivotal civil rights protests in the 1960s, has been sidetracked by bitter infighting and financial setbacks in recent years, and now faces an uncertain future.