ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602120043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
ORGANIZERS WERE UNCERTAIN about whether there was enough interest in the Star City for a chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. But as membership continues to grow, those initial doubts are dissipating.
At first, Perneller Chubb-Wilson wondered if Roanokers really wanted a chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but she doesn't anymore.
In the first eight days she got out the word she was forming a chapter, she says, 50 people signed up. Now she says there are more than 100 members.
She was installed last month as president of Roanoke's first chapter of the SCLC, the national organization founded in the 1950s by the Rev. Martin Luther King.
As more than 20 chapter members gathered for a meeting Saturday at Faith and Hope Church in Northwest Roanoke, Chubb-Wilson said members aim to eliminate two long-standing legal complaints of blacks and other Virginians: federal judges' handling of civil rights cases; and Virginia's "employment-at-will" law, which allows employers to fire people without telling them why.
Chubb-Wilson contends that Roanoke federal judges' personal ties around the state make them less than fair on the bench, so she wants them replaced with judges from other states. She recently wrote President Clinton, asking that no more civil rights cases be heard here until the court is investigated. "Disparity of justice is the norm in the Western District of Virginia," she wrote, "unless you are one of the 'good old boys,' their families or their friends."
As for abolishing the employment law, Chubb-Wilson plans to keep tabs on Del. Clifton "Chip" Woodrum and other legislators. "I'll be riding herd on ... Woodrum until it's done."
The state and national offices of the SCLC can give the local chapter a voice that will be heard outside Roanoke, said Chubb-Wilson. Now, she said, the new chapter's officials can videotape statements and get them on CNN and other national news programs.
She said she began organizing the chapter last year when she realized she could not handle all the job discrimination complaints she was receiving as president of another group, Concerned Citizens for Justice USA. That organization focuses on the court system.
Chubb-Wilson and some of her SCLC members have complained that the Roanoke branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is not doing enough to halt sex, age and race discrimination in the area.
SCLC chapter secretary Gloria Dowe was among 18 NAACP members who tried to oust the Rev. Charles Green as branch president last year. Dowe, fired by Total Action Against Poverty, claimed that Green did not intervene in her firing and that of another TAP employee because Green is a member of TAP's board of directors. Green denied any conflict of interest.
Besides Chubb-Wilson and Dowe, officers of the SCLC are the Rev. Lenord Hines, Herman Carter and Jeanette Manns, vice presidents; Wincey Recard, assistant secretary; and Louise Coles, treasurer. Board members are Henry Loney, a Pentecostal minister who is chairman, Durwin Bonds, Bob Akerson, Cheryl Bundick, Mignon Chubb-Hale, the Rev. Ivory Morton, the Rev. Marvin Fields, the Rev. David Keaton, Ida Raiford, Odessa Williams and Peggy Mason.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY/Staff 1. Perneller Chubb-Wilson leads aby CNBmeeting Saturday of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at
Faith and Hope Church of God. color. 2. (headshot) Chubb-Wilson.