SCLC leader threatens boycott over KC park board appointment

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference will call for a boycott of Kansas City if the mayor does not remove a member of the park board who is also a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

Charles Steele Jr., president and chief executive officer of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said Tuesday that his civil rights organization would make its point with a boycott of Kansas City if Frances Semler, 73, remained on the park board.

Steele also said the national NAACP board should join SCLC and the National Council of La Raza and pull its 2010 convention from Kansas City because of Semler's appointment.

"We are asking all civil rights organizations to stay out of Kansas City. We are going to shut you down," Steele said.

He did not detail what the boycott would involve other than marches.

"I believe in the element of surprise," Steele said.

Steele made his announcement Tuesday to coincide with activities honoring Martin Luther King Jr., who co-founded the SCLC five decades ago. He said Mayor Mark Funkhouser's appointment of Semler, an opponent of illegal immigration, was part of a pattern of racial insensitivity.

Semler is a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, which is known for posting sometimes-armed patrols on the Mexican border and picketing construction sites where illegal immigrants may be working. The Arizona-based organization says it wants U.S. immigration policies enforced.

Funkhouser said that by pulling their conventions, the civil rights groups were financially hurting Kansas City's minority residents and businesses.

"I want to know where these people were who are now ranting at me while the city was leaving behind large segments of the minority community," the mayor said.

He also said Semler is a good park board member.

Steele made his comments at a news conference announcing that the SCLC's board in early November had decided to hold its annual convention in New Orleans this summer instead of Kansas City.

Kansas City convention officials said the SCLC had contacted them about holding their convention in late July.

They said that the SCLC asked for about 250 hotel rooms but never put down a deposit. The majority of the expected 2,000 attendees would have been area residents, said Rick Hughes, head of the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association.

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Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com