Leadership
The best-known member of the SCLC was Martin Luther King, who was president and chaired the organization until he was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Other prominent members of the organization have included Joseph Lowery, Ralph Abernathy, Ella Baker, James Bevel, Diane Nash, Jesse Jackson, James Orange, Charles Kenzie Steele, C.T. Vivian, Fred Shuttlesworth, Walter E. Fauntroy, Claud Young, Septima Clark, Martin Luther King III, Dorothy Cotton, Curtis W. Harris, Hosea Williams, Maya Angelou, and Andrew Young.
- Presidents
| • 1957–1968 | Martin Luther King, Jr. |
| • 1968–1977 | Ralph Abernathy |
| • 1977–1997 | Joseph Lowery |
| • 1997–2004 | Martin Luther King III |
| • 2004 | Fred Shuttlesworth |
| • 2004–2009 | Charles Kenzie Steele, Jr. |
| • 2009–2011 | Howard W. Creecy, Jr. |
| • 2011–present | Isaac Newton Farris, Jr. |
Read more about this topic: Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Famous quotes containing the word leadership:
“Nature, we are starting to realize, is every bit as important as nurture. Genetic influences, brain chemistry, and neurological development contribute strongly to who we are as children and what we become as adults. For example, tendencies to excessive worrying or timidity, leadership qualities, risk taking, obedience to authority, all appear to have a constitutional aspect.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)
“This I do know and can say to you: Our country is in more danger now than at any time since the Declaration of Independence. We don’t dare follow the Lindberghs, Wheelers and Nyes, casting suspicion, sowing discord around the leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt. We don’t want revolution among ourselves.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)