#walter fauntroy

[seanhowe]

Amazing story about surveillance of Coretta Scott King in 1968, entered into the Senate record by Rep. Walter Fauntroy in 1974.

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Impact Directory, 1974

The Impact Directory lists African-American businesses in the Washington, DC metro area. This edition from 1974 includes a letter from then Congressman for Washington, DC Walter Fauntroy. He writes in 1974 that the Impact Directory is a “vital economic tool that has too long been missing in the Black community,” and urges readers to patronize the businesses listed in the directory. 

This directory was published by the Impact Consortium, Inc. and printed by Impact Press, Inc. 

[robinlynnemabin]

Is Marching Bullshit & Is Pastor Financially Illiterate ? - 619-768-2945

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Walter Fauntroy

Walter Edward Fauntroy (born February 6, 1933) is the former pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., and a civil rights activist. He is also a former delegate to the United States Congress and was a candidate for the 1972 and 1976 Democratic presidential nominations as a favorite son, as well as a human rights activist. His stated life work is to advocate public policy that "declares Good News to the poor, that binds up the broken hearted and sets at liberty them that are bound" in the United States and around the world.

In 2012, Fauntroy disappeared and presumably fled the United States after a bench warrant was issued for his arrest in conjunction with allegations he had written a fraudulent check for $55,000. Fauntroy's wife was eventually forced to file for bankruptcy. While his whereabouts were initially unknown to even his family, it was assumed Fauntroy was living somewhere in the Persian Gulf. In 2016, Fauntroy returned to the United States and was arrested at Washington Dulles International Airport. He had been hiding in Ajman, the capital of the Emirate of Ajman in the United Arab Emirates.

Background

The fourth of seven children, Walter Fauntroy was born and raised in Washington, D.C.. His mother, Ethel Fauntroy, was a homemaker. His father, William T. Fauntroy, Sr., was a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. Walter grew up in the Shaw community in Northwest Washington, and attended the New Bethel Baptist Church just a few blocks from his home.

He graduated second in his class at Washington's all-black Dunbar High School in 1951, and the members of his church held fund-raising dinners to provide him with a college scholarship. When he graduated from Dunbar in 1952, his church gave him enough money to pay for his first year at Virginia Union University in Richmond. He pledged Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity while at Virginia Union, from where he graduate with honors in 1955, and then earned a degree in divinity from Yale.

He is married to the former Dorothy Simms of Petersburg, Virginia. They have two children: Marvin Keith and Melissa Alice.

Civil rights leader

During his stay at Virginia Union University, Fauntroy met the 22-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr., himself an ordained Baptist minister. With much in common, the two men formed a friendship that began with an all-night discussion of theology. Fauntroy joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and upon his return to Washington, D.C., became an influential lobbyist for civil rights in Congress. Fauntroy also helped to coordinate the 1963 March on Washington at which King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

After completing his education, Fauntroy became pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church. He returned home with an unorthodox view of Christian service that his parishioners immediately embraced. Believing that religion was something more than a Sunday morning pastime, Fauntroy took part in civil rights demonstrations, sit-ins, and marches – both in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

As director of the Washington Bureau of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Fauntroy served as D.C. Coordinator of the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, and a coordinator for the 1965 Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March and the 1966 Meredith Mississippi Freedom March. President Lyndon Johnson appointed him Vice Chairman of the White House Conference on Civil Rights in 1966 and Vice Chairman of the D.C. City Council in 1967.

Fauntroy also founded and led the Model Inner City Community Organization (MICCO). This organization, which Fauntroy headed until 1971, used federal grants to improve inner city neighborhoods using black architects, city planners, and construction engineers to design and build homes, schools, stores, and other projects in urban Washington. At one time the budget for MICCO was well over $30 million, a community planning and neighborhood development group in Washington, D.C., that established and began to implement the Shaw Urban Renewal Project.

Fauntroy played a key role after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., meeting both with President Johnson and with activist Stokely Carmichael during the immediate aftermath. Fauntroy urged people, in person, on TV, and over radio, to adhere to King's policy of nonviolence. He also led a prayer at King's funeral.

Because his religious beliefs placed a premium on community service, Fauntroy gravitated toward the political arena. In 1967, he was named vice-chairperson of the Washington City Council, a nine-member body appointed directly by the president of the United States. Fauntroy sat on the city council for two years, resigning when his commitments as director of MICCO began to take all of his time.

In March 2010, Fauntroy asked the United States Supreme Court to stop gay marriage from taking place in the District of Columbia, pending a "vote by the people".

Congressional career

The District of Columbia had no formal representation in Congress before 1970. That year, President Nixon signed the District of Columbia Delegate Act that gave the District one non-voting delegate to Congress. Fauntroy wanted the job. With the support of his fellow pastors in the city – and with appearances by his friend Coretta Scott King — he defeated two primary opponents who had both spent twice as much money as he did. Having won the primary by a substantial margin, Fauntroy easily beat Republican John A. Nevius and other candidates, including future D.C. council members Julius Hobson of the D.C. Statehood Party and Douglas E. Moore, who ran as an independent. Fauntroy was sworn in March 23, 1971, becoming the first delegate to represent the citizens of the District of Columbia as a member of the United States House of Representatives in almost 100 years.

Although Fauntroy's status in the Congress did not allow him to vote on the House floor, he was allowed a vote in committee and could introduce legislation on any issue. Fauntroy therefore became influential with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) as a liberal with an agenda that included the concerns of inner city residents, the poor, and minorities. Fauntroy's special quest was for home rule – and eventually statehood – for the District of Columbia. Using his considerable political clout, he oversaw legislation that provided for direct election of a mayor and a city council in Washington by 1973. Fauntroy briefly considered running for mayor of Washington himself but instead decided to stay in Congress. He was returned to his office five times over the ensuing years, sometimes with as much as 85 percent of the vote.

In Congress, he was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. He chaired the Caucus in 1981 and led the organization in presenting, for the first time, a budget to be debated by the House. The "Constructive Alternative Budget" was debated on the House floor for two days. He was a member of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee, Congressman Fauntroy chaired for six years the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and for four years chaired the Subcommittee on International Development, Finance, Trade and Monetary Policy. He also chaired, for fifteen years, the Bipartisan/Bicameral Task Force on Haiti.

Fauntroy authored the Black Leadership Family Plan For the Unity, Survival and Progress of Black People in 1982. The booklet laid out a strategy for Black social, political, and economic development. On Thanksgiving Eve in 1984, Fauntroy along with Randall Robinson and Mary Francis Berry launched the Free South Africa Movement which included their arrest for a sit in at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Presidential campaigns as favorite son

During the 1972 Democratic presidential primaries, Fauntroy campaigned in the D.C. primary as a favorite son candidate and won the largely uncontested event with 21,217 (71.78%) votes against 8,343 (28.22%) for unpledged delegates.

In the 1976 Democratic presidential primaries, he again participated in the D.C. primary, this time losing to eventual nominee Jimmy Carter; he placed second overall according to some measurements, but received zero delegates at the Democratic convention.

Post-congressional career

Felony conviction

In 1995, Fauntroy pleaded guilty to a felony charge of filing a false disclosure statement in 1989. Fauntroy falsely reported making a $23,887 donation to a Washington church at the end of 1988.

Fauntroy stepped down from his seat in Congress in 1990 to run for mayor of Washington, D.C.. He was defeated by Sharon Pratt Kelly. Fauntroy rebounded from his defeat. He told the Washington Post: "I put together a very careful and thorough plan, but unfortunately that never got over. But I believe that all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord." Indeed, Fauntroy returned to the New Bethel Baptist Church, where he resumed a full-time ministry and rededicated himself to community service.

Fauntroy also founded Walter E. Fauntroy & Associates, a consulting firm that provides lobbying services for a variety of clients. The first and biggest client to sign on with Fauntroy was Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC). Since 1992, Fauntroy has been lobbying Congress to pass legislation to create an "enterprise fund" for South Africa. He has been actively encouraging new private U.S. investment in South Africa as well. "I'm having a great time," Fauntroy told the Washington Post from his new offices on Connecticut Avenue. "The chances are very slim that I would run for local office in the District."

He is president of the National Black Leadership Roundtable (NBLR), the national network vehicle of the Congressional Black Caucus that he founded in 1977. In that capacity, as a part of the NBLR’s Seven Point Program, he is co-chair of the Sudan Campaign, chairman of the Business Enterprise Development, LLC and currently heads up a U.S.-based private sector effort to cure extreme poverty in Africa by the year 2025 in pursuit of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. The drive is undertaken by the Roundtable in partnership with the Zimbabwe Progress Fund (ZPF) and is known as the Millennium Villages Project. Its focus is upon villages in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2005, along with fellow former African-American Democratic congressman, the Reverend Floyd Flake, he joined with U.S. Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) to support the Houses of Worship Freedom of Speech Restoration Act (H.R. 235), which would have allowed tax-exempt religious institutions to engage more directly in current politics.

Robust and athletic through most of his life, Fauntroy was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1993, treated, and cured. He took his condition public to demystify the illness and to assure those who might be afflicted by it that they could be cured. He and his wife, Dorothy, also adopted an abandoned crack baby whom they named Melissa Alice.

According to an April 25, 2015 Washington Post story, Fauntroy had been out of the country since 2012, and his exact whereabouts were unknown, even to his wife and family. He occasionally phoned from a Dubai number to briefly check on people. But he gave no information on his location or exact details on his current life. A March 2015 report by the UK Daily Mail also details financial problems he's recently faced, resulting in a bench warrant being issued for his arrest after writing a bad check for $50,000 connected to a Maryland Obama inaugural event he was organizing. On June 23, 2016, the Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had contacted Fauntroy in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, and provided assistance in arranging his return to the United States, which was expected to occur in late June or early July 2016. He did return on June 27, 2016, and was arrested at Dulles International Airport.

Opposition to gay marriage

Fauntroy had publicly opposed gay rights for some time. In 1983, he acted to bar LGBT inclusion in the program of Washington's 20th anniversary observance of Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington, although the chief organizer of that march, longtime civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, was an openly gay man.

Fauntroy has been criticized by supporters of gay rights for his support in 2001 of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

In January 2007, Fauntroy was asked to speak at a Martin Luther King day celebration in Eugene, Oregon. The city's human rights commission, knowing Fauntroy was against gay marriage, decided to withdraw from the event, which caused a firestorm of criticism. Ultimately, the commission rejoined the event.

More recently, Fauntroy, along with six other pastors from Maryland and Washington, D.C., filed suit in D.C. Superior Court attempting to allow a referendum to keep the District from recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages. The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics blocked the referendum because it is illegal to put on the ballot any referendum on an issue covered by the Human Rights Act.

Opposition to the Tea Party Movement

Fauntroy views the grassroots conservative Tea Party movement as a racist political group. In an August 26, 2010 article by ABC, Fauntroy said, "We are going to take on the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism, and the scourge of poverty, that the Ku Klux – I meant to say the Tea Party," Fauntroy told a news conference today at the National Press Club. "You all forgive me, but I – you have to use them interchangeably."

2011 Libyan civil war

Fauntroy visited Libya on a "peace mission" during the 2011 Libyan civil war. He remained there through the invasion of Tripoli, amongst the journalists holed up at the Rixos Al Nasr, where all Western media was based; this fact was confirmed by CNN reporter Matthew Chance on August 23, 2011, who noted on Twitter that Fauntroy was among the journalists being held within the hotel. He was released with the rest of the foreign nationals on August 25, 2011, and returned to Washington, where he took part in remembrances of the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

In an interview with The Afro in early September, Fauntroy claimed to have witnessed Danish and French special forces soldiers on the ground in Libya, beheading and maiming civilians and rebels alike and placing responsibility for the violence on the Libyans. He also said he believed "more than 90 percent of the Libyan people love [Muammar] Gaddafi", the Libyan strongman opposed by the rebel movement. He defended Gaddafi and condemned his opponents, including NATO, saying, "We believe the true mission of the attacks on Gaddafi is to prevent all efforts by African leaders to stop the recolonization of Africa." The Afro noted that it was unable to confirm any aspects of Fauntroy's story, and there has been no independent corroboration of his claims.

Awards and honors

In recognition of his distinguished record of humanitarian service, both his alma maters, Virginia Union University and Yale University, have conferred honorary Doctor of Law Degrees. He also holds honorary degrees from Howard University and Georgetown University Law Center.

The National Urban Coalition granted Fauntroy the Hubert H. Humphrey Humanitarian Award from National Urban Coalition in 1984.

Wikipedia

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ROWLAND SCHERMAN Walter Fauntroy, Date Unknown Photograph: Black and White Type: Archival Digital Print

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Embed from Getty Images

AUGUST 14, #onthisday in 1965 (51 years ago): Civil Rights leader the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Paul Moore, former pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church Walter Fauntroy and Ralph Abernathy leading citizens on a thank you march to the White House, Washington DC, August 14, 1965. (Photo by Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images). @gettyimagesarchive More photos at http://www.projectgado.org/depthoffield

[dcaap-blog]

The Congressional Baseball Games were played annually each summer by members of the United States Congress. The game began as a casual event among colleagues in 1909 and eventually evolved into one of Washington, D.C.'s most anticipated pastimes. In the game, Republicans and Democrats form separate teams and play against each other. The game has raised millions of dollars for local charities in the District of Columbia. Spectators include crowds of congressional staffers and, occasionally, even dignitaries and presidents.

In 1971, Delegate Walter E. Fauntroy of the District of Columbia was one of the first African Americans to join the game along with Rep. Ronald Dellums of California.

Post submitted by Jada Curtis, DCAAP Processing Assistant

[rasdivine]

Former Congressman: ‘I Saw NATO Troops Behead Libyans’

Walter Fauntroy claims shocking evidence of war crimes

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Monday, September 12, 2011

Former US Congressman Walter Fauntroy claims he saw NATO troops behead Libyans as part of the siege to overthrow Gaddafi’s regime, a conflict Fauntroy attributes to the geopolitical agenda to re-colonize Africa.

Fauntroy was a Congressman representing District of Columbia for a period of 20 years between 1971 and 1991.

He embarked on a peace mission to Libya but soon went into hiding, with many fearing he had been killed. However, the former Congressman has re-emerged to claim he witnessed NATO soldiers commit war crimes.

According to a report by Afro.com, Fauntroy “Watched French and Danish troops storm small villages late at night beheading, maiming and killing rebels and loyalists to show them who was in control.”

“The rebels told Fauntroy they had been told by the European forces to stay inside. According to Fauntroy, the European forces would tell the rebels, “‘Look at what you did.’ In other words, the French and Danish were ordering the bombings and killings, and giving credit to the rebels.”

Shocked by what he witnessed, Fauntroy fled back to the United States, vowing, “The truth about all this will come out later.”

The Congressman added that NATO’s involvement in the civil war was primarily about preventing, “all efforts by African leaders to stop the recolonization of Africa.”

CNN confirmed that Fauntroy was amongst the journalists holed up at the Hotel Rixos before he was released on August 25. Fauntroy also claims that he personally met with Colonel Gaddafi during his time in the country.

As we have previously highlighted, atrocities have been committed by both Gaddafi loyalists and rebel fighters, although the establishment media is loathe to report instances of black Libyan migrant workers being slaughtered orincarcerated by western-backed rebels.

Numerous reports from international aid agencies confirm that rebels are rounding up thousands of innocent black migrants and taking them to prison camps as part of mass reprisals that include cases of indiscriminate killings, mistreatment and torture.

Migrant blacks and sub-Saharan Africans comprise one third of the entire Libyan population, and a minority were hired by Gaddafi as mercenary fighters, but rebels are treating them all as enemy combatants, with reports of abuse, murders and mass arrests increasing in volume.

Special forces troops from NATO powers were involved on the ground, having directed rebels for months, in the recent siege which drove Gaddafi out of his Tripoli stronghold.

Whether or not Fauntroy’s claims are accurate, the fact that NATO has stood back while the rebel forces it commands, who are also being commanded by members of Al-Qaeda, launched a genocide against innocent black Libyans completely eviscerates the so-called “humanitarian” justification for NATO’s military intervention.