KING'S ELDEST SON TO HEAD RENOWNED CIVIL RIGHTS GROUP.Byline: Kevin Sack The New York Times Martin Luther King III Martin Luther King III (born October 23 1957, in Montgomery, Alabama) is a human rights advocate and community activist. He is the first son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. His siblings are Dexter Scott King, and Rev. Bernice Albertine King. , the eldest son and namesake of the first leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), civil-rights organization founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King, Jr., and headed by him until his assassination in 1968. , was elected the fourth president of that eminent civil rights group Saturday. In an acceptance speech heavy with references to his father, who was assassinated in 1968, King said that for the country to turn away from its poor and disenfranchised residents ``would mean that my father died in vain.'' He added, ``I will not allow that to happen.'' King, 39, succeeds the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who has led the Atlanta-based organization for the last 20 of its 40 years. Lowery low·er·y also lour·y adj. Overcast; threatening. , 75, had planned to retire in July, but the group's search committee announced at that time that it had not settled on a successor and needed more time to interview candidates. Lowery agreed to stay on temporarily, and Saturday delegates from the SCLC's 300 chapters and affiliates met at the slain civil rights leader's former church, Ebenezer Baptist, and voted to affirm the search committee's selection of King with a unanimous chorus of ``amens.'' He will take office Jan. 15, his father's birthday, becoming the first SCLC SCLC abbr. Southern Christian Leadership Conference president who is not an ordained minister. Among the nine candidates for the job were Ralph David Abernathy III, a Georgia state senator and the son of the group's second president; Walter Fauntroy, a former congressional delegate from the District of Columbia District of Columbia, federal district (2000 pop. 572,059, a 5.7% decrease in population since the 1990 census), 69 sq mi (179 sq km), on the east bank of the Potomac River, coextensive with the city of Washington, D.C. (the capital of the United States). ; former Rep. Cleo Fields of Louisiana; and Adam Clayton Powell Adam Clayton Powell can refer to:
New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. councilman. King takes the helm of the group at a time when it is seeking new leadership to maintain its tradition of protest-minded activism. While King did not lay out an agenda Saturday, he said he would continue to focus the group's attention on external problems affecting blacks, like the assault on affirmative action, as well as internal problems, like the abandonment of children by black fathers. King, a former county commissioner who has also headed a group called Americans United for Affirmative Action, lamented that corporate boardrooms and high school classrooms still do not reflect the principles espoused by his father. Referring to the 1963 speech in which his father said he dreamed of the day that his children would be judged by their character and not by their color, King said, ``The day about which my father dreamed is not today.'' King was joined Saturday by his mother, Coretta Scott King Coretta Scott King (April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was the wife of the assassinated civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., and a noted civil rights leader, author, singer, and founder and former president of the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. . |
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