Rare SCLC Program, One of the Most Important Conventions of the Civil Rights Movement

[Martin Luther King, Jr.] Program from Southern Christian Leadership Conference, August 14-17, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee. Eleventh Annual Convention. 12 pp., 5.5" x 8.5".

In August 1968, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) convened in Memphis, Tennessee, for the first time without its founding president Martin Luther King, Jr. He had been assassinated just over four months earlier in Memphis. By selecting Memphis as the site of their annual convention, the leadership of the SCLC boldly proclaimed that the movement would outlive its founder.

The four-day program included a keynote address by Rev. Andrew J. Young, musical solos by Aretha Franklin, and an address by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr. On Friday evening after SCLC president Dr. Ralph David Abernathy presented his address at the Mason Temple, the convention closed the evening by singing the anthem of the Civil Rights movement, “We Shall Overcome.”

Excerpts

“Message from the President / By Dr. Ralph David Abernathy”

“This Eleventh Annual Convention is the most serious and crucial one in the history of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Just one year ago in Atlanta, as we celebrated ten years of successful struggle, our Founding President, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., envisioned a new challenge.... Now we are in the midst of that great movement conceived and planned by Dr. King and SCLC. But our leader is gone, assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968.”

“We need only remember our original goal in SCLC—to redeem the soul of America—to know that we must try and we must not fail.”

“Finally, may I say that in selecting the City of Memphis, where Dr. King was taken away, we have expressed to all people, our supporters and our enemies, that we will never give up in our crusade.”

“Statement of Purpose / William A. Rutherford / Executive Director”

“We have lost our founding President, our great spiritual guide and leader; the forces of right-wing reaction are again boldly wielding oppressive power in the country; the tactical use of non-violence as a tool for peaceful social change is being seriously challenged and attacked from many sides.”

At the suggestion of Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King, Jr. had invited sixty black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, in January 1957. A follow-up meeting a month later in New Orleans led to the organization of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action against all forms of segregation. The SCLC existed as a group of affiliated individual churches and community organizations that worked together for African American civil rights.

In 1968, the SCLC and Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the “Poor People’s Campaign” to address issues of economic justice. They called on Congress to invest in rebuilding America’s cities. On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee, to support African American sanitation workers who were striking for higher wages and better treatment. On April 3, King addressed a rally at Mason Temple, the international headquarters of the African American denomination Church of God in Christ. There he delivered his famed “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. The next evening at 6:01 p.m., James Earl Ray fatally shot the 39-year-old King, as he stood on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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