The Southern Christian Leadership Conference has a historic and symbiotic connection to the African- American civil rights movement. It was founded to coordinate and support nonviolent protests of segregation and played a key role in many of the most famous demonstration of the civil rights movement. Its history is so intertwined with that history the SCLC's website can rightfully say 'Welcome To The Home of The Movement'.
One of the SCLC co-founders and its first president was none other than the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He ran the organization from its founding in 1957 until his 1968 assassination. His son Martin Luther King III led the SCLC from 1997 to 2004.
Can you guess who was one of the other co-founders of the SCLC?
If you said Bayard Rustin, congratulations and go to the head of the class.
This morning the SCLC announced the results of their October 29 presidential election. For the first time in SCLC history they will be led by a woman and she has accepted the position. Interim SCLC president Rev. Byron Clay told reporters about their new leader, "She is excited. I am excited. The nation will be excited."
The TransGriot, much of the African-American GLBT community and our supporters aren't giddy about this news. It's because of who the SCLC selected as their first female president.
It's none other than Dr. King and Coretta Scott King's baby girl, the Rev. Dr. Bernice King.
Even though she'll be the third King to lead the organization and she's more than qualified to do it, I'm not feeling her in that post.
So why is Moni not feeling her? Glad you asked that question, TransGriot readers.
For starters, she's a minister and elder at New Birth Baptist Church in Lithonia, GA, the 25,000 member predominately African-American megachurch run by Bishop Eddie Long. He spent most of the 2K's kissing up to the GOP, the Bush misadministration and the conservative movement's behind shilling for faith-based bucks.
New Birth Baptist Church was the outfit that sponsored an anti-marriage equality "Reigniting the Legacy" march in 2004 that started at the foot of Dr. King's tomb in the ATL and ended at Turner Field.
There's also this problematic statement she made as well.
“I know deep down in my sanctified soul that my father (Dr. King) did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”
Never mind the fact that King's late mother Coretta and her late older sister Yolanda had other ideas. Her mother was a long-time supporter of GLBT rights.
For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law.... I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience.
My husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' On another occasion he said, 'I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible.' Like Martin, I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others. The great promise of American democracy is that no group of people will be forced to suffer discrimination and injustice."
Yolanda King was an outspoken advocate for GLBT rights as well.
Coretta Scott King has stated she believed her husband would have supported the quest for equality by gays and reminded her critics that the 1963 March on Washington was organized by Bayard Rustin, an openly gay man.
The Rev. Eric Lee, the Los Angeles SCLC chapter president that the previous leadership tried to force out because of his support for marriage equality in California, said in a statement that he hopes King will follow her parents' example with respect to the rights of lesbians, gays and transgender people."We know that her mother, Coretta Scott King, was supportive of LGBT equality, and we believe that Dr. King would have been as well," Lee said. "My hope is that her election is a sign that SCLC is returning to its spirit of equality for all people."
I'm with Rev. Lee. Even after expressing my reservations about the latest Rev. Dr. King to helm the SCLC, I'm going to take the advice I give to the white GLBT community or a regular basis about President Obama and give her time to prove me wrong.
I want to see if the Rev Dr. Bernice King is going to live up to her father and mother's legacy and take the SCLC in a different, more positive direction for the 21st century.A direction that recognizes Black GLBT people are part of the African American community and a stakeholder in the civil rights legacy that SCLC brought about.
If she doesn't after a reasonable amount of time has elapsed, well, you know the TransGriot and other Black GLBT bloggers definitely won't be shy about calling her out about it and reminding her that we are.
