Newspaper Page Text
The Champion, Thursday, Feb. 19 - 25, 2015
LOCAL NEWS
Page 15A
Leaders
Continued From Page 1A
Early in his ministry, he was
mentored by civil rights leaders such
as Revs. Williams, Lowery, Jackson,
Coretta Scott King and former am
bassador Young.
“Before I knew it I had come to
an understanding that my ministry
would not be confined to the four
walls of the church,” Hutchins said.
“If I were going to live out my calling
as the next generation of visible and
civil and human rights leadership I
would have to be able to travel and
preach and speak in various venues.
You cant do that when you’re pastor-
ing. I don’t have a church that I pre
side over because of that.”
Hutchins is the CEO of MRH-
LLC, a management and commu
nications consulting firm focused
on diversity, public affairs and crisis
management. His work has been
featured on CNN, Fox News, C-
Span, ABC, NBC, CBS, BET and
in The New York Times, USA Today
and Newsweek. From 2000 through
2006, Hutchins led the National
Youth Connection, an organization
he founded that was the only young
adult-led student civil rights organi
zation in the country.
Hutchins said there are no
younger leaders—in their 30s to
50s—who are “visible” civil rights
leaders.
Instead, Hutchins said, artists,
entertainers and athletes have be
come “de facto leaders when it comes
to social issues, particularly civil and
human rights matters.
“The bridge was not built
from the generation of leaders
that marched in ’50s and ’60s that
brought us out of Egypt and across
the Red Sea,” Hutchins said. “We find
ourselves.. .suffering from wilderness
conditions.”
Hutchins cited higher unemploy
ment for Blacks versus all other eth
nic groups; an entertainment indus
try “where young African-American
men and women are expected to de
grade themselves;” and a dispropor
tionate prison population for Blacks.”
“Those are wilderness experi
ences,” Hutchins said.
“We have that generation that
brought us across the Red Sea, and
across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in
Selma, but there has not been that
generation that’s taken us over the
Jordan River and closer to the Prom
ised Land,” he said, using biblical
imagery.
Hutchins said the country is
“in a pivotal moment now” because
“the profane, ineffective, visceral
anger that is being displayed in these
protests that we’re seeing today is
distinctly different... [from] the kind
of love and peace that embraces the
justice.. .that permeated the demon
strations in the ’50s and ’60s.”
The “lack of leadership from
those who are of the kind of Christ-
centered, peace-loving inclusive
mindset that carried the 50s and 60s
protests.. .has given rise to the more
nationalist, separatist angry tone that
we see.. .today,” Hutchins said.
His goal is to “call another gen
eration of preachers together.. .to
sit together at a table and figure out
how we can do, in this generation,
what SCLC did in their generation,”
Hutchins said. “No one has called
them together the way Dr. King
called them together.
“It’s my intent to create a collab
orative that is faith-based—a frame
work for this generation of clergy
leaders to be able to engage in social
advocacy around civil and human
rights issues that face this genera
tion,” he said.
“We’ve got to position a genera
tion of leaders to continue the work
that has been.. .in hiatus mode for
at least the last 30 years,” Hutchins
said.