Southern Christian Leadership Conference
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The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an American civil rights organization. It played a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King, Jr.
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[edit] Origins
The origins of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference lie in the Montgomery Bus Boycott that began after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man. The bus boycott, which lasted from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, brought together two Montgomery ministers: Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
As the tactic of boycotts to desegregate buses began to spread in the South, a group of 60 activists met in Atlanta, Georgia, in January 1957 to discuss the use of nonviolent resistance. In addition to King and Abernathy, the conference attracted such civil rights activists as Ella Baker, T. J. Jemison, Stanley Levison, Joseph Lowery, Bayard Rustin, Fred Shuttlesworth, C. K. Steele, and others.
At the meeting, the group established the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration, which was soon renamed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As its name suggested, the organization intended to draw its strength from leaders of the Black Church in the South.
[edit] Tactics
Since its establishment, SCLC has been committed to the use of nonviolent civil disobedience as a means of securing equal rights for African Americans. In recent years the organization's focus has expanded to include human rights movements around the world.
[edit] Activities
During its first few years, SCLC activities were focused primarily on education and voter registration. They were often criticized by younger activists in groups such as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) who were participating in sit-ins and Freedom Rides.
[edit] Albany Movement
In 1961 and 1962, SCLC joined SNCC in the Albany Movement, a broad protest against segregation in Albany, Georgia. It is generally considered the organization's first major nonviolent campaign. It is also generally considered unsuccessful: despite demonstrations and arrests, few changes were won, and the protests drew little national attention.
[edit] Birmingham campaign
By contrast, the 1963 SCLC campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, was an unqualified success. The campaign focused on a single goal — the desegregation of Birmingham's downtown merchants — rather than total desegregation, as in Albany. The brutal response of local police, led by Public Safety Commissioner "Bull" Connor, stood in stark contrast to the nonviolent civil disobedience of the activists.
After his arrest in April, King wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in response to a group of clergy who had criticized the Birmingham campaign, writing that it was "directed and led in part by outsiders" and that the demonstrations were "unwise and untimely."[1] In his letter, King explained that, as president of SCLC, he had been asked to come to Birmingham by the local members:
- I think I should indicate why I am here In Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." I have the honor of serving as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. ... Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here I am here because I have organizational ties here.[2]
King also addressed the question of "timeliness":
- One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. ... Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied." We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights.[2]
The most dramatic moments of the Birmingham campaign came on May 2, when more than 1,000 Black children left school to join the demonstrations; hundreds were arrested. The following day, 2,500 more students showed up, and "Bull" Connor met them with police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses. That evening, television news programs showed the nation — and the world — scenes of fire hoses knocking down schoolchildren and dogs attacking individual demonstrators, with no means of protecting themselves. Public outrage led the Kennedy administration to intervene more forcefully and a settlement was announced on May 10, under which the downtown businesses would desegregate and eliminate discriminatory hiring practices, and the city would release the jailed protesters.
[edit] March on Washington
[edit] Relationships with other organizations
During the early 1960s, the group was considered more radical than the older NAACP and CORE and more conservative than the younger Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SCLC had a mentoring relationship with SNCC in its earlier years, before SNCC abandoned its exclusive policy of nonviolence.
[edit] Members
The best-known member of the SCLC was Martin Luther King, who led the organization until he was assassinated on April 4th 1968. Other prominent members of the organization included Joseph Lowery, Ralph Abernathy, Ella Baker, Charles Kenzie Steele, Maya Angelou, C.T. Vivian, Fred Shuttlesworth, Jesse Jackson, Walter E. Fauntroy, Claude Young, Al Sharpton, Curtis W. Harris, and Andrew Young.
Presidents
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: 1957 to 1968
- Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy: 1968 to 1977
- Rev. Joseph Lowery: 1977 to 1997
- Mr. Martin Luther King III: 1997 to 2004
- Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: February 2004 to November 2004
- Mr. Charles Kenzie Steele, Jr.: November 2004 to Present
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Statement by Alabama Clergymen"
- ^ a b Martin Luther King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail"
[edit] References
- Marian Aguiar, "Southern Christian Leadership Conference", Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, New York: Perseus, 1999.
- Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, Freedom: A Photographic History of the African American Struggle, London: Phaidon, 2002.
- Juan Williams, Eyes on The Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, New York: Viking, 1987.
[edit] External links
- The SCLC Official Website
- Entry in the New Georgia Encyclopedia
- Civil Rights Movement Veteranses:Conferencia Sur de Liderazgo Cristiano
fr:Southern Christian Leadership Conference
