Trammell may have diverted at least $569,000 from SCLC
Trammell may have diverted at least $569,000 from SCLC photo
Raleigh Trammell (pictured), the national SCLC’s former chairman, and former treasurer Spiver Gordon have been asked by the group’s board of directors to explain the expenditures by Friday, Jan 15.
Two local SCLC board members voice support of Trammell amid accusations
SCLC chairman Trammell under fire
By Rhonda Cook
Cox News Service
ATLANTA — The Southern Christian Leadership Conference officials dismissed last month, including Dayton Chapter President Raleigh Trammell, may have diverted at least $569,000 of the civil rights group’s money to bank accounts they controlled, according to the new board chairwoman and documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Trammel, the national SCLC’s former chairman, and former treasurer Spiver Gordon have been asked by the group’s board of directors to explain the expenditures by Friday, Jan 15.
Board member
Art Rocker said the questionable expenditures by Trammell, in Dayton and Gordon, in Eutaw, Ala., could exceed the $569,000 already in question. There are at least two SCLC bank accounts set up by Gordon that the organization cannot access.
“We don’t know how much money has (gone) through there,” Rocker said.
Acting chairwoman Sylvia Tucker said some SCLC leaders first had questions about the organization’s money when a former board member alleged last summer that as much as $1.4 million of the SCLC’s money had disappeared. She said $569,000 of that has been identified and the review was continuing.
Rocker, chairman of the SCLC’s Florida chapter, said the civil rights group will file suit “against Spiver and Trammell to go after every dime.” No suit had been filed as of Thursday.
At the same time, Rocker said, the group is asking for criminal investigations into the questionable expenditures in Alabama. He said he had already talked with Alabama’s attorney general, Troy King. King’s office could not be reached for comment Thursday morning. A spokeswoman for King said the office did not confirm or comment on any pending investigations.
When contacted by the AJC, Trammell refused to discuss the allegations. Gordon did not respond to requests for a comment.
The two men were dismissed Dec. 21 for “possible mismanagement” of organizational funds, according to news accounts and documents given to the AJC. Reports published two days later quoted Trammell as saying he had not been dismissed but had stepped aside for the duration of the investigation. Gordon has not commented publicly.
Then on Dec. 28, supporters of the two men filed suit in Fulton County — where the SCLC is based — asking a court to determine whether Trammell’s and Gordon’s removals violated the SCLC’s constitution.
“It’s been very difficult and it’s been very sad,” said Tucker, the acting chairwoman and a minister in Virginia. “It’s just sort of unbelievable that the greatest organization in the world... would ever have to be dealing with such matters as this. We are trying to do everything correct and in the Christian way.”
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. founded the organization in 1957 to coordinate protests calling for an end to public segregation and for civil rights of African-Americans. But in the decades since, the SCLC has endured scandals, legal struggles and internal dysfunction.
The board’s internal investigation into the most recent issue has just begun.
New Orleans attorney Randal Gaines, a board member, has been tasked with tracking the money. Gaines sent letters dated Jan. 5 to Trammell and Gordon, asking them to account for several expenditures within 10 days.
Memos and transcripts obtained by the AJC provide details of spending that led to the internal investigation.
The records -- produced by several SCLC officials — indicate the men wrote checks to themselves, paid for funeral expenses and credit card and insurance bills, and sent money to their individual chapters and their special projects. None of those expenditures had board approval, Rocker said.
Records show, for example, that between March 2006 and last November, Gordon claimed reimbursements totaling $236,739 for a prison ministry that is run out of the SCLC’s Eutaw, Ala., office, which Gordon heads. Another $162,927 was paid directly to the Eutaw chapter.
The Jan. 5 memo asked both men to describe the purpose of the prison ministry because other board members were unfamiliar with it. The memo noted that Trammell had approved the expenditures to the prison ministry.
Gaines, in the memo, also questioned checks totaling $24,450 that were endorsed over to Trammell.
The questions were originally raised in a Dec. 15 memo written by an SCLC lawyer.
“There’s still hundreds of thousands of dollars missing from the SCLC that we have to get control of,” board member Rocker told the AJC.
In a Dec. 15 letter to the board, chairwoman Tucker wrote that “more than $569,000 may have been diverted from the national organization to a SCLC board account managed and controlled by Rev. Raleigh Trammell and Mr. Spiver Gordon. The organization now faces unknown penalties and liabilities with the Internal Revenue Service because of these actions.”
In addition to the financial investigation, the board also is discussing its response to a sexual harassment claim brought against Trammell. Tucker said that allegation by a woman who works in the Dayton office was also a reason for removing Trammell last month.
The board and the woman’s attorney met for several hours Wednesday to discuss her charges, but there was no resolution, Rocker told the AJC. Tucker said the woman, DaMisha Douglas, is still on the SCLC payroll.
Douglas, who was Trammell’s aide, complained in an Aug. 24 letter that was mailed to the board that she had been pressured into a sexual relationship with her boss. In that same letter, she claimed that Trammell threatened to fire her if she did not sign documents inaccurately attesting to work someone else had done.
In subsequent letters to the SCLC, she wrote that Trammell also made improper advances toward her 15-year-old daughter.
Tucker said the SCLC is trying to handle the problems in the open.
“We’re trying to do everything to correct [the situation with the woman] in the Christian way. We feel that this young woman deserves [a remedy],” Tucker said. “We’re not trying to cover up anything.”
Records show, however, that some board members preferred otherwise.
Rocker said some board members wanted to close the SCLC Atlanta headquarters for 30 to 60 days so the office’s 15 employees would be unavailable to provide information to board members looking into the matter.
“We are moving forward. We are going ahead with the investigation because it is the right thing to do,” Tucker said
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