Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker
Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference Assails Decision of Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name Mike Huckabee Keynote Speaker The General Secretary and the Board of Trustees of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc, an organization that resources over 2,000 African American congregations across the country, today assailed the decision of the Arkansas Martin Luther King Commission to name former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the keynote speaker for the King birthday observance. (Read full article) Huckabee is slated to give his remarks at an invitation-only event at the Governor’s Mansion on January 17. “This decision shows a flagrant disregard for Dr. King’s values and total disrespect of the work that Dr. King did in the name of civil and human rights for African Americans in this country and the world,” said the Rev. Dr. Iva E. Carruthers, the General Secretary. “Only those whose interests it serves to misappropriate Dr. King’s message and engage in revisionist history at this time in U.S. history, would favor this type of event with Mike Huckabee as the speaker. It is a further insult to the demand for justice that one that calls itself the “King Commission” would endorse and allow this,” she continued. “The event is being paid for by taxpayers, which makes the affront even more egregious,” said the Honorable Rev. Wendell Griffen, of Little Rock, AK and SDPC trustee who recently wrote that the policies being passed and carried out represent a “re-assassination” of Dr. King.
“Sooner or later, those who feed a death wish find a way to destroy themselves. Over the course of the past three generations, we have watched and heard the death rattle of the society that rejected Martin Luther King Jr. during his lifetime, killed him, and has re-assassinated him since the day he died.,” Griffen wrote. “Now that the State of Arkansas has proudly announced its intention to “re-assassinate King” by having an un-reconstructed Southern Baptist preacher and right-wing politician named Mike Huckabee deliver a “keynote address” on the King holiday at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion at the invitation of the state agency that bears King’s name, we should be clear what its conduct means,” he said. “A society that behaves this way has gone beyond a death rattle. It is already morally and ethically dead,” Griffen concluded. Mike Huckabee has a history of speaking and working against the gains made by African Americans and others in this country. The former governor has