From Chauncey Eskridge
Author: Eskridge, Chauncey
Date: May 22, 1962
Location: Chicago, Ill.
Genre: Letter
Topic: Voter registration
Details
Responding to what Eskridge calls King’s “screams of anguish” over recent negative press about SCLC in the Pittsburgh Courier, he assures King that the situation has been addressed.1 No reply from King has been found.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
41 Exchange Place, SE
Atlanta 3, Georgia
Dear Martin:
As a result of your screams of anguish with respect to the article written in the Courier by McCray of South Carolina, and Trezz Anderson, of Atlanta, Mr. McCoy read the riot act to the people involved.2 So forthright was he that it is now contemplated that in June, after you have moved, they will send Frank Bolden from the Pittsburgh office to do a long series of articles on you and SCLC.3 This should be our opportunity to set the record straight concerning your own financial condition, your income and your estate. It is also an opportunity to set the record straight about the financial affairs of SCLC. I would suggest the granting of permission for the writer, Bolden, to see the last audit reports made by Bonser and, if you wish, copies of your 1959, 1960 and 1961 returns.4
Moreover, since the information that we gave to the Treasury Department, along with our application for exempt status for SCLC, is now a public record, we might even exhibit those financial statements to the writer.5 This would also permit exposure nationally of the work we are doing in voter registration and what our connections are with the Southern Regional Council with respect to financing the voter registration drive.6
Bill Nunn assures me, most vociferously that the Courier has no policy which is inimicable to your interest. However, he is curious about the rumors that he has heard, he says, about your “Take” from SCLC.7
If you approve of this idea, I suggest that you write a letter to Bill Nunn and invite Frank Bolden to come and do this series of articles and suggest a time when you would be available to Frank. Frank Bolden is a man I have known nearly all of my life, as is true with Bill Nunn.
Because of my relationship with them, I would chance the observation that they would seek to please me. If you think that my presence there along with Bolden is necessary, please advise. If there is anything else that you think I may do in the premises, please advise.
Note the enclosed clipping from the Wall Street Journal how your name is curiously connected with the subject person of the article.8
Fraternally yours,
[signed] Chauncey
Chauncey Eskridge
msk
1. Courier columnist John H. McCray had asserted that SCLC was attempting to usurp the NAACP’s position in the South and that it “ram-rodded or joined in on a great many sit-ins, sent hundreds of youths into activities costing money in bail and fines, and then ducked out and left NAACP to foot the bills” (“Need for Changing,” Pittsburgh Courier, 5 May 1962). Wyatt Tee Walker disputed McCray’s claims in a Courier interview, asserting that “there’s no death struggle between Southern Christian Leadership Conference and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” and accused McCray of being “uninformed of the facts” (Ted Watson, “Struggle between NAACP-SCLC Denied,” Pittsburgh Courier, 26 May 1962). Chauncey Eskridge (1917–1988) graduated from Tuskegee Institute in 1939 with a B.S. in Business Administration. He served as a field artillery officer and spotter pilot during World War II before receiving his LL.B. from John Marshall Law School in 1949. Eskridge joined Moore, Ming, and Leighton (later McCoy, Ming, and Leighton) in 1954 as a tax specialist. Eskridge was one of six lawyers on King’s legal team during his 1960 Alabama perjury trial for tax evasion and became King’s personal financial attorney. He also served as legal counsel for SCLC and as Muhammad Ali’s lawyer when Ali was indicted for draft evasion in 1967. In 1981 he was elected a Cook County district judge and held the position until retiring in 1986.
2. Fleetwood McCoy was senior partner of the law firm McCoy, Ming, and Leighton and simultaneously represented King and the Pittsburgh Courier. In a 15 June 1962 letter to McCray, Courier editor William Nunn wrote that King’s relationship with McCoy is the only reason the newspaper has “not been embarrassed” by the “pot-shots you are taking at” King. Nunn (1900–1969) was managing editor of the Pittsburgh Courier from 1940 until his retirement in 1963.
3. SCLC was in the process of moving its offices due to a dispute with the owners regarding the desegregation of a restaurant in the same building. For more, see King to Benjamin J. Massell, 9 June 1962, pp. 470–473 in this volume. Frank Bolden (1913–2003), a longtime Courier reporter, was an accredited World War II correspondent and interviewed international figures including Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.
4. Allan Bonser worked for the IRS as a revenue agent in Atlanta.
5. SCLC applied for federal tax exemption on 10 August 1961 and was granted a 501(c)(4) exemption in May 1962.
6. For more on SCLC’s financial relationship with the VEP, see King to Leslie Dunbar, 19 January 1962, pp. 368–369 in this volume.
7. In a May 1962 SCLC board meeting, King tabled a motion from several board members to pay him a salary “commensurate with [his] office and in keeping with the budget,” noting that his salary as a co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, supplemented with six thousand dollars from speaking fees, was “enough to live on.” King officially received a salary of one dollar from SCLC in order to be eligible for the organization’s health insurance benefits (Minutes, SCLC board meeting, 15 May 1962).
8. The Wall Street Journal ran an article covering President Kennedy’s civil rights plan, noting that several civil rights leaders, including King, were “far from satisfied” with the administration’s progress toward issuing an executive order on housing and its failure to promote broad civil rights legislation (William M. Beecher, “Kennedy Plans a Series of Actions to Soothe Critics, Sway Voters,” Wall Street Journal, 10 May 1962).
Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.