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SCLC directors call for Trammell's resignation

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By Jim DeBrosse, Staff Writer Updated 11:46 PM Saturday, March 6, 2010

A concerned faction of the national directors of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference called this morning, March 6, for the resignation of Rev. Raleigh Trammell of Dayton as both chairman of the national organization and the Dayton chapter, but the national office controlled by Trammell is already attacking the legitimacy of the meeting.

At a three-hour meeting at the Ramada Airport Hotel in Atlanta, 18 board members voted to remove Trammell and Treasurer Spiver Gordon from any position with the SCLC and make acting chairwoman Sylvia Tucker the interim chairman of the new national SCLC organization until the national director board meeting in April of 2010.

Five other board members filed affidavits supporting the actions. The 23 votes represent a majority of the SCLC board, which has 38 to 44 members in all. But organizers were careful not to call the gathering an official board meeting.

“We feel that we can no longer be silent,” said Bernard Lafayette, the group’s spokesman and an SCLC veteran.

Trammell and Gordon are facing federal, local and internal investigations for alleged embezzlement and fraud that LaFayette said are weakening their effectiveness as leaders. He said the men would have a couple of weeks to respond to their request. The group has hired an attorney to pursue legal means to remove the men from the executive board if they do not step aside.

Lafayette said the organization’s woes were a distraction from issues like high minority incarceration rates, education disparities and voting rights and is threatening the group’s future.

“We promise you this organization will not go down” the way other civil rights organization have collapsed, including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Congress for Racial Equality, LaFayette said. “Many times it’s because of the leadership. We’re not going to allow this to happen to SCLC.”

LaFayette, who was a co-founder of SNCC, is a minister in Tuskegee, Ala.

The full board of directors is scheduled to meet April 19 to April 21.

Saturday’s meeting came on the heels of a caucus in Dayton, where executive board members pledged their support for Trammell and Gordon.

If Trammell resigns, finding someone to lead the SCLC chapter in Dayton won’t be an issue, said Henry Essick, a local minister. “It’s the kind of person who steps into the role. Will it be someone who’s there for service” or for the money?

Local civil rights activist Keith Lander said he would “like to assemble some people from the community who are willing to restore a level of respect for the local SCLC, and I’m pretty sure there are some folks out there willing to help me do that.”

But Don Black, an SCLC Dayton board member and owner of the Dayton Weekly News, said there is still some question whether the 23 people who voted Saturday “are authorized board members” of the SCLC. “I don’t even know if they have the authority to call for (Trammell’s) resignation.”

Members of the national board tried in November to eject Trammell and Gordon of Eutaw, Ala., whom they accuse of embezzling some $569,000 from the civil rights organization founded in 1957 by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. But Trammell supporters filed suit in an Atlanta court, which reinstated the men in January.

A news release e-mailed late Friday from supporters of Trammell and posted on the national SCLC Web site contends that a notice for today’s meeting, on SCLC letterhead and dated Feb. 11, was unauthorized and contained false information. It said the letter’s list of 20 people who purportedly called the meeting includes people who aren’t board members and who didn’t approve the letter. It also contends that the meeting is being called without proper notice.

“Consequently, any attempted action at the purported gathering related to the national SCLC will be null and void,” the release said.

Tucker, named interim director by the 23 members, is scheduled to talk to the FBI at her Virginia office Thursday as part of the agency’s investigation into the alleged embezzlement. On Feb. 11, FBI agents raided Dayton SCLC headquarters and the homes of Trammell and his daughter, SCLC official Angela Goodwine, and seized computers and other items.

No charges have been filed in the case.

Last week, Montgomery County Administrator Deborah Feldman asked County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck Jr. to look into possible fraud in a county-funded feeding program run by Trammell, who is chairman of the SCLC Dayton chapter and executive director of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Dayon.

At least three of nine people Trammel billed the county for were not being fed home-delivered meals through the program, including one who has lived in the Dayton Vertans Affairs Medical Center nursing home for more than year. Since 1988, the county paid the SCLC and IMA more than $3.4 million to run programs for the needy.

Trammell’s programs no longer receive any public dollars.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2437 or jdebrosse@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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