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 to seek Trammell’s resignation “are authorized board members” of the SCLC. “I don’t even know if they have the authority to call for (Trammell’s) resignation.”
Board members have accused Trammell and Treasurer Spiver Gordon of embezzling $569,000 from the Atlanta-based civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. State and local, federal and internal investigations are under way. No charges have been filed.
A faction of the national directors of the SCLC held a three-hour meeting at the Ramada Airport Hotel in Atlanta on Saturday morning. The 18 board members asked Trammell and Gordon to resign from any position with the SCLC and named acting chairwoman Sylvia Tucker as interim chairman of the national SCLC until the national board meets in April.
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.
The investigations of Trammell and Gordon are weakening their effectiveness as leaders, LaFayette said. The men would have a couple of weeks to respond to the 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, he said.
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 19-21.
Saturday’s meeting followed a caucus in Dayton, where executive board members pledged their support for Trammell and Gordon.
Members of the national board tried in November to eject Trammell and Gordon, of Eutaw, Ala. 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 contended that a notice for Saturday’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 included people who aren’t board members and who didn’t approve the letter. It also contended that the meeting was 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 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.
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 Dayton.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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