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Loss of fed funds buoys local support for Trammell

Dayton’s IMA leader is confident things will be satisfactory once whole truth is known.

Ron Alvey/Staff photographer Raleigh Trammell (middle), President of SCLC, and IMA’s president, the Rev. Wilburt O. Shanklin (left).

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By Lynn Hulsey and Tom Beyerlein
Staff Writer Updated 11:28 AM Sunday, February 21, 2010

DAYTON — Investigations into use of taxpayer money by the Rev. Raleigh Trammell’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference are also blotching the reputation of a related group: Dayton’s Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance.

But IMA’s president, the Rev. Wilburt O. Shanklin, said he won’t stop Trammell from overseeing IMA programs.

“I’m satisfied that the way we’ve been operating will be satisfactory once the whole truth is known and not just a part,” said Shanklin.

His nonprofit organization lost federal funding when a local board last week rejected 2010 money for a food program after learning the group had shuttered a pantry paid for with tax dollars.

Shanklin wouldn’t disclose the members of the IMA board, but he said they “are looking at everything. We will not be omitting or overlooking anything.”

The SCLC, where Trammell is chairman, and the IMA are closely intertwined. Shanklin earns an annual salary of $35,000 as president of the IMA, while Trammell is an unpaid executive director. Both men have leadership positions at the national SCLC, and Trammell’s Central Missionary Baptist Church owns the property on West Third Street where the organizations’ offices are side by side.

Shanklin serves as Trammell’s “compliance officer” at the national SCLC in Atlanta, where board chairman Trammell and national treasurer Spiver Gordon are accused by SCLC officials of embezzling $569,000.

Shanklin and two other men sued several national SCLC officials in Georgia, preventing the organization founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King — at least temporarily — from firing Trammell and Gordon.

In an interview, Shanklin blamed Trammell’s problems in Dayton on “allegations by a couple of disgruntled employees at the national (SCLC). That’s even what caused the FBI, I believe, to become involved.”

The FBI on Feb. 11 raided the SCLC headquarters, along with the houses of Trammell and his daughter, Angela Goodwine.

A faction of the SCLC national board accuses Trammell and Gordon of working together to divert SCLC money to bank accounts they control.

An internal SCLC investigation report, obtained by the Dayton Daily News, claims Gordon made interstate wire transfers from Alabama to a Trammell bank account in Dayton. Both men deny the allegations and no charges have been filed.

Shanklin, who is a member of Dayton Mayor Gary Leitzell’s Leadership Council, expressed sympathy for Trammell and Gordon, who also heads the SCLC chapter in Eutaw, Ala.

“It’s tough,” Shanklin said. “Tough on Trammell, tough on Spiver, tough on all of us.”

He has shown less regard for Trammell’s accusers.

On Jan. 28, Shanklin wrote a letter informing Art Rocker, a member of the national SCLC board, that he would be fired as president of the Florida SCLC. The letter offered Rocker the opportunity for a hearing to show “why your name shall not be forever stricken from the annals of the SCLC.”

Rocker fired back, filing an intimidation complaint against Shanklin with the Alabama attorney general’s office, where Rocker and other SCLC national officials had met with an investigator.

On Feb. 8, Shanklin wrote a similar letter to the Rev. Sylvia Tucker, suspending her as national board vice chairwoman. He also threatened to press legal action if she attempted to use the SCLC offices without his permission.

He signed it: “The struggle continues, Wilburt O. Shanklin.”

SCLC General Counsel Dexter Wimbish has also accused Shanklin of intervening with DaMisha Douglas of Dayton, a national and local SCLC employee who filed a sexual harassment complaint against Trammell.

Shanklin would say little about his contact with Douglas.

“The simple truth is she had come to me in capacity as a friend because I had done some counseling with her,” he said.

Wimbish said it was Shanklin who contacted Douglas on Trammell’s orders, asking her “what it would take to resolve the claim.”

Douglas declined to be interviewed.

Shanklin said he has said little publicly about the controversy because of a consent decree in Georgia forbidding certain SCLC officials, including Shanklin, of discussing it.

“When a judge says shut up, I figure he means it,” Shanklin said. “Sometimes you have to allow God and time to heal some things that you cannot heal with your mouth.”

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