SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE

(SCLC) American nonsectarian agency with headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., established by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and his followers in 1957 to coordinate and assist local organizations working for the full equality of blacks in all aspects of American life. The organization worked primarily in the South and some border states, conducting leadership-training programs, citizen-education projects, and voter-registration drives. The SCLC played a major part in the civil-rights march on Washington, D.C., in 1963 and in antidiscrimination and voter-registration drives, notably at Albany, Ga., and Birmingham and Selma, Ala., in the early 1960scampaigns that spurred passage of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After King's assassination in April 1968, his place as president was taken by the Reverend Ralph David Abernathy. While the SCLC maintained its philosophy of nonviolent social change, it soon ceased to mount giant demonstrations and confined itself to smaller campaigns, predominantly in the South. The organization was further weakened by several schisms, including the departure in 1972 of civil-rights leader Jesse L. Jackson and his followers who had staffed Operation Breadbasket in Chicago, which was directed at economic goals.