Basic Information
Name: Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Nickname: "Cyclic"?
Born: Not in one gigantic babysplosion à la the Big Bang, but at different times to different mothers. Thank goodness.
Died: We've all gotta die sometime
Nationality: American
Hometown: Lots of 'em, mostly in the South
WORK & EDUCATION
Occupation: Busting racist chops with their mind powers
Education: They had it
FAMILY & FRIENDS
Parents: They had 'em
Siblings: They had 'em
Spouse(s): They had 'em
Children: They had 'em
Friends: Each other
Foes: How many times do we have to say "racism"?
Analysis
Everybody needs a posse, and the SCLC and its allies were MLK's. Just like a posse, they'd ride into town, mix things up, and then move on to the next hotspot. No, not wifi—when were you born, 2002?
Oh.
Anyway, not everyone loved how King jet-setted around the country, sometimes leaving things worse in his wake, as happened in the Memphis march. But swooping in to bolster local efforts was the SCLC's strategy, and it allowed them to cover a lot of ground, even if things didn't always turn out perfectly.
In "I've Been to the Mountaintop," Dr. K drops the names of a few SCLC allies: "I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit" (21.3). It won't permit us, either, but here are some brief glosses on those he mentions.
James Lawson: Enough Already
Seriously, if you really want more James Lawson, go read a book.
H. Ralph Jackson: Awaken the Beast Within
Not an SCLC member but an eventual ally, Jackson was a Memphis minister who joined the sanitation strike early on. He viewed it initially more as a poverty issue than a race issue, but he had a road-to-Damascus moment during that first big march when everything went haywire.
(We're talking about the one that happened before King came to town; hit the road over to "Historical Context" and "Key Figure" for more.)
Ralph Jackson was previously a meek fella who had avoided racial conflict for the sake of his career in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. But he believed his savage treatment by the Memphis police was due to racism—"welcome to reality," thought everyone else—and that turned him into a bona fide civil rights samurai.
With the zeal of the new convert, Jackson was right up front during King's Memphis march, arms locked with Dr. K and Ralph Abernathy. That's him on the left in this photo.
Samuel Billy Kyles: The Late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Also not an SCLC member, Kyles was a Memphis minister and friend of Dr. K's who urged him to get involved in the strike.
The night of his assassination, King and friends were attending a dinner at the Kyles home. MLK wasn't known for his punctuality, so Kyles tried to trick him by saying the dinner was at five. But Dr. K called up the Kyleses to RSVP, and someone told him dinner was actually at six.
We wonder who that person was, because they probably felt really bad. Like, really bad.
Here's why: when Billy Kyles showed up early at the Lorraine Motel to pick everyone up, Dr. K said, "Eh, we've got time. Let's hang out on the balcony" (source). And that was the last hanging out he ever did.
Hooked on Benjamin Hooks
That's "Judge Hooks" to you. He's the one who'll "tell you that we have an account here in the savings and loan association from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference" (25.6). In other words, the SCLC puts its money where its…or its mouth…it puts its money where its money is. And you should, too.
Judge Benjamin Lawson Hooks was a Memphis native, a lawyer, a Baptist minister, first African American FCC commissioner, head of the NAACP from 1977–1992, and Tennessee's first African American criminal judge (source). That means he judged criminals, not that he was a judge and a criminal, which is clearly a conflict of interest.
Fun fact: Hooks' grandmother was just the second Black woman in America to get a college degree. Her name was Julia Britton Hooks.
In addition to his many professional activities, Judge Hooks also hooked his claws into the Civil Rights Movement. He participated in sit-ins and sat some more on the SCLC's board of directors. He was also on the board of the National Civil Rights Museum in Tennessee, housed in the former Lorraine Motel, where MLK was assassinated. In 1996, the University of Memphis established the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, a civil rights institution.
All that was good enough to land Benjamin Hooks the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, which we assume he wore pretty much everywhere, because, we would.
Jesse Jackson: You've Heard of Him
Now here's a name you probably know. Jesse Jackson was in the SCLC. He was close to Dr. K, but he had a tendency to take over meetings, and his ambition sometimes perturbed MLK (source). They actually had a spat over this very issue just days before King's assassination, but reconciled in time for Jackson to be present for "I've Been to the Mountaintop."
King also admired Jackson, though, once saying of him that "we knew [Jesse] was going to do a good job, but he's done better than a good job." After King's death, Jackson continued his civil rights work, eventually leaving the SCLC and forming several of his own social-justice organizations, including People United to Save Humanity and the National Rainbow Coalition.
Right around the time Andrew Young got booted out of his ambassadorship, Jesse Jackson got in hot water for backing a Palestinian state and saying some less-than-flattering things about Jews. The two men later felt vindicated when a Middle East peace agreement was secured in 1993. In the 80s, Jackson mounted two presidential campaigns but never won the nomination. He dusted himself off and kept on doing his activist work on behalf of the African American community.