On 24 June, SCLC’s newly appointed executive director Tilley wrote Ella Baker in New York City and requested her suggestions for an upcoming administrative committee meeting.1 Two days later Tilley sent this letter to King and enclosed drafts of several documents intended to advance the work of the Crusade for Citizenship.
Dr. M. L. King, Jr.
Montgomery, Alabama
309 S. Jackson Street
Dear Dr. King:
In this letter concerning SCLC's fund-raising efforts, Levison stresses the importance of King maintaining a nonpartisan position in the 1960 election. Levison also warns him to beware of "heavy pressure" from some of Kennedy's Hollywood supporters who perceive King "as a personality of glamour not as a leader whose responsibilities will continue over decades and through changes of great magnitude."
Dr. Martin L. King
The Ebenezer Baptist Church
407 Auburn Avenue, N.E.
Atlanta, Georgia
SCLC’s associate director updates King on recent civil rights efforts. Baker had spent the previous five weeks in Louisiana organizing a voter registration campaign and collecting evidence of electoral discrimination to present to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
309 South Jackson Street
Montgomery, Alabama
Dear Martin:
In this draft letter to the lawyer for the Fayette County Civic and Welfare League, King commends the organization's "unfaltering perseverance" in its grassroots voting rights campaign in western Tennessee.1 Ella Baker had previously corresponded with Estes regarding assistance SCLC might provide in Fayette and Haywood counties, and on 22 December SCLC sent $800 to support their struggle.2
On 10 December 1958, SCLC executive board members agreed to join the Atlanta All-Citizens Registration Committee to undertake a campaign to add fifty-seven thousand local African Americans to the voting rolls. SCLC assigned executive director John L.
King invites Henry, head of the Clarksdale Committee of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, to the next SCLC meeting, to be held in Norfolk, Virginia, from 30 September to 2 October.
On 19 December King invited United Nations diplomat Bunche to serve on the advisory committee for SCLC's voter registration drive, the Crusade for Citizenship.1 King explained that the Crusade aimed to “implement through non-violent action the decisions the NAACP has won in the courts,” and he assured Bunche that the effort would not “conflict with the NAACP or any group in the field.” 2 Bunche, an NAACP board member, declines t
On 9 January veteran New York organizer Baker moved to Atlanta to coordinate plans for the Crusade for Citizenship.1 Baker first worked from a hotel room before securing office space at 208 Auburn Avenue, where she operated with scarce resources. Baker later remembered creating voter education pamphlets by clipping and pasting words from magazines and newspapers, adding, “I worked out of my vest pocket and whatever access I could have to a telephone at Ebenezer Baptist Church.
On 8 March SCLC board member Moore requested that King write several letters in support of a 9 April Summit Conference on Registration and Voting in Durham, North Carolina, at which King was to appear.1 In response, King wires this statement of encouragement to the organizers.
On the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, SCLC held simultaneous mass meetings in twenty-one southern cities, launching its campaign to double the number of black registered voters in the South. Following an introduction by Pastor S. A. Cousin, King delivers this address to an “overflow audience” at Miami’s Greater Bethel AME Church.1
