The demise of the SCLC
By Cynthia Tucker
August 9, 2004
ATLANTA – The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the venerable civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his lieutenants, may be in its death throes. Its recent convention showcased an agency that has sunk so low that one of the leading candidates for its presidency was a convicted felon.
The SCLC is beset by contentiousness, conflicting agendas and competing egos, bickering so divisive that its last president, Martin Luther King III, threw up his hands and quit in November. The recent annual gathering ended with a vote to keep its 82-year-old caretaker president, the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth. But neither Mr. Shuttlesworth nor any younger successor can hope to restore the organization to its former glory.