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The Official Legal Organ ofDeKalb County, GA. Serving East Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Clarkston, Decatur, Doraville, Dunwoody, Lithonia, Pine Lake, Tucker and Stone Mountain.
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thechampionnewspaper.com
SECTION A: VOL. 24 NO. 34
TheChampion
ist Place
General excellence
Award Winner
Georgia Press Association
‘Better Newspaper Contest’
2007, 2009-2014
FEB. 19 - 25, 2015
500
DeKalb native
issues call for new
civil rights leaders
by Andrew Cauthen
andrew@dekalb champ, com
On Feb. 15, 1957, Dr. Mar
tin Luther King Jr. convened
a group of young pastors to
address the pressing civil rights
issues of their time, and the
historic Southern Christian
Leadership Conference was
born.
Fifty-eight years to the
day later, a group of ministers
answered a similar call by a
DeKalb County native.
Rev. Markel Hutchins, a
37-year-old civil and human
rights activist, said he was
encouraged to issue the call
by Rev. Cameron Alexander
pastor of the Antioch Baptist
Church North in Atlanta be
cause of the absence of young
civil rights leadership in the
country.
“The civil rights leaders
that are on the forefront still
that are best known among the
common citizenry in America
today are.. .Rev. Jesse Jackson,
and Joseph Lowery and An
drew Young.
“Those people are in
their 80s; some of them are in
their 90s,” Hutchins said. “It
is unconscionable to me that
Atlanta is the birthplace of
Martin Luther King }r., cradle
of the American Civil Rights
Movement, home to the larg
est concentration of African-
American college students in
the country, one of the top five
cities in terms of the number
of megachurches.. .,and there’s
not a thriving, innovative na
tional civil and human rights
organization that’s on the fore
front of the struggles for peace
and justice and liberty of all
that is based in Atlanta.”
Hutchins is an Atlanta
resident who spends much of
his time at his family home
in Lithonia taking care of his
father’s affairs and supporting
his mother: his father, Fred
erick Leon Hutchins, is in a
nursing facility and mother,
Dorothy, is in her late 60s.
Currently a member of
Philadelphia Baptist Church
in Atlanta, Hutchins started
preaching at age 8.
“I used to call together my
family members, and gather
together dolls and figurines,
and preach to them. It was
mimicking what I heard
preachers in church do, but I
was very much drawn to that
vocation—that kind of com
passion and passionate ser
vice,” said Hutchins who was
formally licensed to preach
at age 16 at St. Paul A.M.E
Church in Stone Mountain.
When he was 17 years old,
he had “the unique opportu
nity” to serve on a special as
signment as a senior pastor of
an A.M.E. church in Wayside
while the church’s permanent
pastor was ill.
See Leaders on page 15A
Hutchins
Rev. Markel Hutchins is a civil and human rights activist who is seeking to raise the next generation of
civil rights leaders. Photos by Travis Hudgons
64 116
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