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Bernice King on civil rights mission

Source: The Guardian

Nov 01, 2009

Summary

• King's daughter elected as first female SCLC leader
• Issue of gay rights may dominate agenda

She is a firebrand baptist preacher at the forefront of American black politics, whether speaking at the Democratic National Convention, at which Barack Obama was nominated as presidential candidate, or as one of those chosen to eulogise Michael Jackson at the singer's star-studded memorial service.

Now Bernice King, the youngest child of Martin Luther King, has a new mission: to revitalise the civil rights organisation co-founded by her father as the first woman to lead the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

In recent years, the SCLC, born as an America-wide grassroots movement at the vanguard of a struggle against racial segregation, has been damaged by infighting and directional drift.

Now the group, which today is a sprawling church-based network of 10,000 members in 17 US states, has turned to King's daughter to resurrect it.

Bernice King's election at the weekend, which made her its first female leader, came just weeks after the resolution of a bitter squabb

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