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[[caption]] Dr. Joseph Lowery [[/caption]]

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[[caption]] Ralph Abernathy [[/caption]]


SOUTHERN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE Meets AUGUST, 1978

SCLC
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
332 Auburn Ave., N.E., Atlanta, Ga. 30303

JOSEPH E. LOWERY, President
WALTER S. FAUNTROY, Chairman of the Board

Martin Luther King, Jr.,
(1929-1968) — FOUNDER

RALPH D. ABERNATHY
President, Emeritus

November/December, 1977

Dear Friend:

It was with both humility and honor that I accepted the presidency of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) at our August convention. The mantle was handed from Martin Luther King Jr., to Ralph Abernathy, and now to me. Yet, I have accepted the challenge with prayer and determination, for the "dream" remains unfulfilled.

As you may know, in the Spring I accepted President Carter's invitation to meet with him at the White House. I was accompanied by several members of the Board. We discussed high unemployment among minorities and America's support of majority rule in southern Africa. Mr. Carter assured us of his continuing efforts to combat unemployment and has since advised us that his support of the Hawkins-Humphrey Bill for full employment will be submitted to Congress shortly. On three other occasions, I have been invited to the White House to give input to an urban strategy.

We have been active in supporting affirmative action programs by public and private businesses and institutions. The nation will never remove historical and current racial inequities without doing so intentionally and preferentially. It is clearly within the Judeo-Christian ethic to engage in preferential or special ministries to those "who are the least of these". Such intentionality has enabled our nation to assist in the establishment and support of a new nation in the Mideast; to provide needed benefits for veterans and physically handicapped; and to meet other social and economic needs.

At our convention this year, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award was given to the children of Soweto. The $1,000 honorarium, associated with this award, will go to the widow and children of Steve Biko who died mysteriously in a South African prison. We shall convey the check through U.N. Ambassador Andrew J. Young, former Executive Vice-President of SCLC.

With your help: 1) We shall continue our work in voter registration and political education; 2) Continue to help the working-poor improve their conditions; 3) Continue to protest the importation of coal from South Africa by Southern Utilities, which supports apartheid policies of that nation and also underminds the American coal miners who are already in distress; 4) Continue to respond to the hundreds of calls we receive monthly from people in small communities

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