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SCLC chairman has history of service, intimidation

The Rev Raleigh Trammell can be a stalwart advocate, a pugnacious foe.

Central Missionary Baptist Church's pastor, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell, is accused of embezzling more than $569,000. Staff photo by Jan Underwood

Jan Underwood Central Missionary Baptist Church's pastor, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell, is accused of embezzling more than $569,000. Staff photo by Jan Underwood

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By Tom Beyerlein  and Lynn Hulsey, Staff Writers Updated 10:26 AM Sunday, February 14, 2010

DAYTON — The Rev. Carlton Williams wrote his doctoral dissertation about the impact of HIV/AIDS on the African-American church.

“I lost family members to this virus,” Williams said. “It’s a passion for me.”

Williams said he had no idea what he was getting into in 2008 when he bid on a government contract to provide AIDS education, competing against the Rev. Raleigh Trammell’s Dayton Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Williams’ Mount Olive Baptist Church eventually won the $53,000 contract with Public Health — Dayton & Montgomery County, but not without enduring what Williams called a campaign of “attacks in attempts to intimidate us into withdrawing our grant application.” This, he said, included a letter-writing campaign against him by Trammell supporters, a swipe at his integrity in an SCLC newsletter and an unsuccessful lawsuit accusing him of falsifying the application.

“It was absolutely insane,” he said.

Williams is far from the first person to feel the wrath of Trammell, the national and local SCLC chairman accused by the Atlanta-based civil rights organization of embezzling more than $569,000. He’s also accused of sexually harassing a female Dayton SCLC employee.

At 73, Trammell has established a reputation as a stalwart civil rights advocate and a pugnacious opponent when he feels he’s being crossed.

“I know Raleigh,” said Doug McGarry, executive director of the Area Agency on Aging. “He’s tough. He can be intimidating, politically.”

Montgomery County Administrator Deborah Feldman said Trammell threatened to withdraw support for the human services levy campaign in 2003 unless the county agreed to continue funding West Dayton service providers, including the SCLC.

In 2004, the year he became national SCLC chairman, Trammell famously cursed the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a historic civil rights figure who was then national president. Shuttlesworth, who eventually resigned, said Trammell’s leadership of the organization founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “may result in the destruction of SCLC from within.”

Trammell no longer accepts pay from his two local nonprofit groups — the SCLC and Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance — but he is the paid pastor of Central Missionary Baptist Church at 5160 Derby Road in Jefferson Twp. He owns several rental properties, including one that was boarded up by the city of Dayton.

Over the years, Trammell has been the subject of numerous mortgage foreclosures and a 2007 judgment for failing to pay his taxes.

The church, with Trammell as agent, owns several other properties, including the home of his daughter Angela Goodwine.

Trammell, according to a black history Web site called The History Makers, was born in Grantsville, Ga., to a cotton mill worker’s wife, and graduated from a segregated local high school in 1955. He attended predominantly black Clark College in Atlanta before marrying Anne Walker in 1959 and moving to Dayton, where he had relatives.

Trammell told The History Makers he met King and joined the SCLC in 1960. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.

Court records show he bused tables until landing a low-level job with the Montgomery County Welfare Department in early 1964. He became pastor of Central Missionary Baptist Church in June 1966.

His attorney told jurors at Trammell’s criminal trial in 1978 that he worked his way up from “the lowest job on the totem pole” to deputy county welfare director. He made powerful friends on his way up.

A departmental investigation from 1969 to the mid-1970s uncovered what investigators said were illegal welfare payments of $500,000-$750,000 a year. But investigators said they delayed reporting their findings until 1976 because Trammell had close ties to influential politicians.

The report alleged that Trammell ordered employees on county time to work on the 1972 election campaigns of Commissioners Ray Wolfe and Tom Cloud. Trammell had at least one campaign party at his home for Wolfe, who later went to jail for taking a bribe.

“That he (Trammell) was a powerful and well-connected man was never doubted,” the report said.

In 1975, four women provided Dayton police with sworn affidavits accusing Trammell of coercion and sexual harassment. One of them accused Trammell of long-term harassment culminating in a sexual assault in Trammell’s county office. Raleigh and Anne Trammell sued two women for libel, but eventually dropped the lawsuit.

Other employees accused him of using welfare recipients to park his car and of using promotions “to make payoffs and create obligations.” Trammell denied the allegations and said they were based on politics and racism.

The Welfare Department fired Trammell in 1976. In September 1977, he was arrested in a predawn raid on his home at 1505 Olmstead Place, one of 26 welfare workers or clients named in an indictment alleging theft, fraud and forgery totaling more than $1.2 million.

A jury convicted Trammell of opening fraudulent welfare accounts in 1973 and 1974 and using them to obtain welfare checks and food stamps. The minister used a man who had consulted him about marital problems to cash the checks and redeem the food stamps for him. He was sentenced to 4-10 years in prison for larceny and grand theft, but served just over a year before being paroled in 1980.

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