Timeline
Dec. 21, 2009: The national Southern Christian Leadership Conference announces suspension of its national chairman, the Rev. Raleigh Trammell, and Treasurer Spiver Gordon pending an internal investigation into allegations of financial irregularities.
Feb. 11, 2010: FBI agents raid the SCLC Dayton chapter offices and the Dayton homes of Trammell and his daughter, SCLC official Angela Goodwine. The investigation continues, but no federal charges have been filed.
Feb. 12, 2010: A Dayton Daily News investigation finds Trammell’s SCLC and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance are receiving Federal Emergency Management Agency funding for a nonexistent food pantry and domestic violence shelter.
Feb. 14, 2010: The Dayton Daily News finds a pattern of questionable claims, sloppy government oversight and problems with publicly funded programs, including the home-delivered meals program for the elderly, run by Trammell’s groups. Eventually, Trammell’s charities are stripped of all public funding.
March 2010: The Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney’s Office launches an investigation into allegations that Trammell and Gordon stole about $569,000 from the SCLC.
Sept. 1, 2010: A Fulton County Superior Court judge ends months of litigation, ruling Trammell is not the legitimate leader of the national SCLC.
Jan. 12: Montgomery County Common Pleas Court indicts Trammell on 51 felony counts related to his use of public money for a home-delivered meals program.
Nov. 16: The Associated Press reports that the Fulton County district attorney has concluded there’s no proof Trammell and Gordon stole more than $560,000 from the national SCLC.
Sources: Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office and Dayton Daily News stories.
The Fulton County, Ga., district attorney’s office has determined there’s no proof that the Rev. Raleigh Trammell of Dayton and another former national leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference stole more than $560,000 from the cash-strapped civil rights organization founded by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Trammell said it was “a miscarriage of justice” that an Atlanta judge considered the Georgia theft allegations in a civil case when he upheld in 2010 the ouster of Trammell, who was the SCLC’s national and Dayton area chairman, former Treasurer Spiver Gordon and a pro-Trammell slate of board members.
“We knew it was nothing but envious and jealous people wanting to take charge of our organization” who made the allegations, Trammell said. “The whole case in Atlanta was a miscarriage of justice and it was done by people who marched with us. It was not done by adversaries. It was done by my brothers and sisters.”
Trammell still is awaiting trial on 51 felony charges in Montgomery County stemming from his administration of a publicly funded program to provide home-delivered meals for senior citizens. And the FBI is still investigating Trammell, analyzing items agents seized during a February 2010 raid on his home and local SCLC offices.
An anti-Trammell faction of the national SCLC board, which ultimately ousted Trammell and took control of the organization, alleged financial wrongdoing, leading to the Fulton County
probe. An analysis of records provided by members of the faction to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper found Trammell and Gordon wrote checks to themselves, paid for funeral expenses and credit card and insurance bills and sent money to their individual SCLC chapters and their special projects. Faction members said they did so without board approval.
But, quoting from a draft report from the district attorney’s office, The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the D.A.’s investigators determined the money was used properly.
“The investigation showed that the funds were actually used for approved programs and approved travel reimbursements,” the report says.
“It’s been a long and difficult struggle,” said the Rev. Bernard LaFayette, the national SCLC’s current chairman and a Trammell opponent. “This is the end of the beginning. Now we’ll be able to get off to a new start.”
LaFayette and Dayton’s Bishop Richard Cox, who is a national board member and local SCLC president, both said the Atlanta judge ruled properly in upholding the ousters. The national SCLC president is now Isaac Newton Farris Jr., a nephew of civil rights activist King.
The Rev. Markel Hutchins, an Atlanta activist and Trammell supporter, said the pro-Trammell faction has appealed the ouster in the Georgia Court of Appeals. Hutchins said the theft allegations were “the biggest and most poisonous lies told in recent civil rights history,” and “for an Atlanta judge to use (them) to authenticate the ouster of a person like Rev. Trammell is simply unjust and unfair and, quite frankly, un-American.”
He said the district attorney’s investigation should satisfy SCLC donors. “The funders of SCLC now know that their dollars of support were not squandered.”
Asked if he hopes the appeals court reinstates him, Trammell said, “What I’m hopeful for is the truth will be told about this matter.”
A trial is pending on a 51-count criminal indictment against him in Montgomery County alleging
grand theft, forgery and tampering with government records. A county grand jury issued the indictments after a Dayton Daily News investigation found irregularities in Trammell’s accounting of the home-delivered meals program and other taxpayer-funded social service programs administered by the Dayton SCLC.
Fred Alverson, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Columbus, said the federal investigation into Trammell and the SCLC offices continues. He would not elaborate.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2264 or tbeyerlein@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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