King's civil rights group 'here to stay'
ATLANTA — Three years ago, when Charles Steele Jr. became president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he worked out of a cramped headquarters without power or light. The embattled civil rights group's funds were scant, and so, too, was it's sense of mission.
Its fortunes have since changed, and the organization that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. co-founded is marking its 50th anniversary today with the opening of a $3-million international headquarters here. The building, which Steele says is debt-free, represents just half of the funds the SCLC has raised from corporate sponsors since he became president.
For Steele, 61, a former Alabama state senator, the group's new red brick home is a fitting emblem of its newfound stability. After decades of speculation about its future — factions fought so bitterly during the group's 2004 convention that police were called — the SCLC, he says, "is here to stay."
Read entire article at LAT
Its fortunes have since changed, and the organization that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. co-founded is marking its 50th anniversary today with the opening of a $3-million international headquarters here. The building, which Steele says is debt-free, represents just half of the funds the SCLC has raised from corporate sponsors since he became president.
For Steele, 61, a former Alabama state senator, the group's new red brick home is a fitting emblem of its newfound stability. After decades of speculation about its future — factions fought so bitterly during the group's 2004 convention that police were called — the SCLC, he says, "is here to stay."