Pase 10
April 1998
The AC Phoenix
Proclaiming a Resurrection
for a Crucified People
Faith
By the Honorable Walter E. Fauntroy
Meeting in its Mid-Winter Session on
Feb. 28, 1998, at the Floward University
Divinity School in Washington, D.C.,
the National Black Leadership
Roundtable (NBLR) set both the theme
and the timetable for its non-partisan
voter registration and get-out-the-vote
(COTV) campaign. This session was
held jointly with the Assault On
Illiteracy Process (AOIP) with which
many Roundtable organizations are also
affiliated. This exciting collaborative
effort is targeted on 1998 elections
where the African American vote has
the potential for being the margin of vic
tory for candidates for public office who
support matters of importance to all
African American citizens.
Last year, senior members of the
Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)
called upon their retired colleague and
former chair of the CBC Braintrust on
Black Voter Participation and Network
Development, the Rev. Walter E.
Fauntroy, to put together again the
National Black Leadership Roundtable.
It is the national network vehicle of the
caucus, which he founded and led dur
ing his 20-year tenure as a member of
Congress.
Over 200 heads of national African
American organizations, meeting on
Sept. 13, 1997, at the Annual
Congressional Black Caucus Week-end
in Washington, D.C., resolved not only
to re-establish the Roundtable, but to do
so around a specific plan and timetable
designed to do in 1998 what black vot
ers did in 1986: remove a decisive num
ber of persons from public office who
had, by their actions, attempted to turn
the clock back on policies that had
begun to improve the quality of life for
African American citizens.
Sensing that African Americans are in
a mood to launch an effective counter
attack at the polls this year,
Roundtable/AOIP leaders agreed upon
three (ihot buttond issues around
which to mobilize our voters for the
Nov. 3, 1998, balloting, and upon a
timetable for their voter education, voter
registration and voter turn-out efforts.
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Timetable Highlights
The Roundtable plans to launch the
year-long campaign on the Good Friday
and Easter Weekend, noting that Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. chose that time to
launch the Birmingham Movement,
which culminated in the Historic March
on Washington in 1963 and later to pas
sage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. To
launch this campaign that many feel
will culminate in a massive march by
African Americans on ballot boxes next
Fall, the Roundtable leaders will turn to
the heads of our historically black
church denominations to kick the drive
off with GIDEON ARMY RECRUIT
MENT DRIVES in connection with
Good Friday and Easter Sunday
Morning Services across the nation.
The denominational leaders of
African American churches being asked
to spearhead this part of the drive are
Bishop Chandler D. Owens, presiding
bishop of the Church of Cod in Christ,
Inc.; Bishop Mckinley Young of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church;
Bishop Cecil Bishop, senior bishop of
the AME Zion Church; Bishop Nathaniel
Linsey, senior bishop of the Christian
Methodist Episcopal Church; Dr. Henry
J, Lyons, president of the National
Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc,; Dr. E.
Edward Jones, president of the National
Baptist Convention of America; Dr.
Bennett W. Smith Sr., president of the
Progressive National Baptist
Convention, Inc.; Bishop S.C. Madison,
presiding bishop of the United House of
Prayer For All People; and Minister
Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam.
A (bCideon Soldier6 is one who will
be willing to take the names of five per
sons who live on the block or in the
apartment where he or she lives and do
two things with them this year. First,
assist them in becoming registered vot
ers; and second, take them to the polls
with them when they go to vote on
election day. Thus we can reasonably
expect that for every 100 members of
our churches who join the Gideon
Army, 500 African American voters will
go to the polls on Nov. 3, 1998. The
Continued on page i I
en we depart our earthly
home for God’s resting place,
it is not how long or brief our
stay, but how we lived our
lives that counts. Though we
may mourn the passing of a
loved one, we should also
take comfort in the memory
of the many kindnesses he
or she has performed.
We conduct every funeral service as to be a source of comfort and inspiration
to the iiving as well as a worthy and memorable tribute to the departed.
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