Last week, Rev. Bernice King, youngest daughter of Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King was named the 7th president of the organization her father founded in 1957, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Since Martin King’s assassination in 1968, the organization, largely built around King’s own personal charisma, ingenious imagination and unflappable moral courage, has struggled to find its way.
Sure it has had its high moments. The community violence prevention programs under the ever-affable Joseph Lowery come to mind. Yet the SCLC has engaged in a game of musical chairs at the presidential level over the past decade (including Martin Luther King III’s conflict-laden stint as president), that has made the organization about as relevant as a Lou Rawls 8-track tape.
For instance, the most national media coverage that this civil rights organization has received in recent years was based on the SCLC’s refusal to advocate for the civil rights of same-sex couples in California. Unlike the NAACP, the SCLC’s chief brass in Atlanta refused to view California’s Proposition 8 as a justice issue, even threatening to remove the president of the Los Angeles chapter that joined forces with Prop 8 protests in his own backyard.
This is why I don’t get SCLC’s latest choice. Rev. Bernice King has been little more than a lightning rod of controversy in regards to progressive concerns and causes. Her theology is informed less by her father and more by the contemporary conservative evangelical right. She is an underling of the financially problematic and morally skewed Atlanta megachurch pastor, Bishop Eddie Long, a dubious member of the Grassley six. (Senator Chuck Grassley’s investigation involves how Bishop Long used money from a “charity” to purchase a $300,000 automobile.) And she has proven herself to be an unbridled homophobe, even to the extent of publicly disagreeing and disassociating herself from her late mother’s support for LBGTQ justice causes.
To be sure, possibly the SCLC just figures it has nothing to lose. It’s not like Rev. King can make the SCLC any less relevant than it is today. On the other hand, maybe the board knew exactly what it was doing. Many have suggested that its time to pull the plug on this organization. Appointing Rev. King as the new president just might be a form of institutional assisted suicide; because she will absolutely kill whatever was left of her father’s productive and progressive legacy!
