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By Tom Beyerlein, Staff Writer Updated 11:24 PM Friday, March 5, 2010

A faction of the national directors of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference plans to meet this morning, March 6, in Atlanta to consider ousting Chairman Rev. Raleigh Trammell of Dayton, but the national office controlled by Trammell is already attacking the legitimacy of the meeting.

A news release e-mailed late Friday 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.

When told of the news release, SCLC Florida President Art Rocker, who is part of the anti-Trammell faction, laughed and said, “Trammell and his trickery. He’s a trip. Y’all got you a doozy up there.”

Today’s meeting “is not for his purpose, the same way we weren’t invited to Dayton,” Rocker said, referring to a Feb. 27 meeting here in which members of the executive board led by Trammell gave their full support to the embattled chairman, who is the subject of criminal investigations by the FBI and Georgia authorities.

Members of the national board tried in November to eject Trammell and Treasurer Spiver 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.

No charges have been filed against Trammell or Gordon.

The news release said the next official board meeting will be April 19-21 in Gordon’s hometown.

Rocker said today’s meeting will proceed. “We are going to show (Trammell) what SCLC is about, and it’s not about trickery. His days are numbered.”

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