Richard Jackson was walking past the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's handsome $3-million headquarters this month, just blocks from the grave of its first president, Martin Luther King Jr.
Jackson, an aspiring rap producer, hadn't heard about the outbreak of scandal and infighting rocking the storied civil rights group.
But the 32-year-old also confessed, a little sheepishly, that he had trouble recalling their story at all: "Who are they, exactly?" he said.
Such is the plight of the modern-day SCLC.
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the organization, under King's leadership, was at the vanguard of the historic struggle -- part of a coalition that organized the March on Washington, registered black voters and through protests focused the world's attention on the injustices of segregation in cities across the South.
Source: LA Times
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