The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference should find a way to settle their differences amicably. One faction recently locked the other faction out of the group's downtown Atlanta headquarters in a dispute that has embarrassingly spilled into the public spotlight.

According to the AP:

The Rev. Markel Hutchins admitted to padlocking two doors and a gate at the building on Auburn Avenue on Monday night. He said he was appointed interim president of the 53-year-old SCLC last week by members of the civil rights organization's board. However, other members of the group's board, including its chairwoman, don't recognize his authority.

The feuding groups were once part of the same board but have met and functioned separately since a rift began months ago."This conduct is criminal and deplorable," SCLC Chairwoman Sylvia Tucker said in a statement after the incident. "It is like a hate crime." Charles Mathis, an attorney representing the Tucker faction, said Tuesday that he filed a temporary restraining order to keep Hutchins from using the headquarters.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would be outraged. King, along with fellow ministers Ralph David Abernathy and Joseph Lowery, founded the SCLC in 1957. The group quickly moved to the forefront of the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of what the group is working on these days. I went to its Web site to see what this historic organization was focusing on today.Unfortunately, what I found was not up to date. Under its priorities and initiatives section was a section for voter registration. I clicked on that link and was taken to an image of "Every Vote Counts 2008." Another link for Tobacco Free Kids talks about how the group was awarded a $25,000 grant to prevent kids from using tobacco in 2002.

The "Latest News" section of the site was inactive, and the archived news' most recent item was from August of last year, congratulating SCLC founder Lowery on being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The site's homepage devotes ample space to the group's current dispute. Full disclosure is important, but so is the group's mission of voter registration and direct action against racial injustice.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution thinks the SCLC has outlived its usefulness. She writes:

Let's be clear about the current round of controversy engulfing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference: The machinations of its factions have nothing to do with eliminating injustice, elevating human rights or reducing the remaining vestiges of racism. Activists associated with the group are engaged, instead, in ego-inflating demagoguery, petty score-settling, and, quite possibly, outright thievery. They are not in the business of carrying out the organization's original mission.

I'm not here to condemn the SCLC. Maybe the group is working on other initiatives, but this dispute serves as a major distraction.

The SCLC reminds me of the NAACP before current president Ben Jealous was installed. The group was heading toward irrelevancy, because it was not tackling the issues of the day. Under Jealous, the group has addressed health care reform and jobs. Jealous is reaching out to the next generation of advocates. In an interview last year, he told me the group is now approaching these issues as human rights issues.

Unfortunately, the charges being made at the SCLC are very serious. The AP writes:

Last fall, federal and local authorities launched an investigation of allegations that the SCLC chairman and treasurer mismanaged at least $569,000 of the group's money. The two deny the allegations and continue to challenge their dismissal by some board members. Chairman Raleigh Trammell and Treasurer Spiver Gordon have not been criminally charged, but the SCLC has spent the months in court, wrangling over control of the organization. Last month, separate factions that both claimed to be the SCLC's board of directors met hundreds of miles apart, and each said they made moves toward saving the group from its legal woes and infighting.

Both sides have asked a judge to resolve these issues. A hearing is scheduled for June 2. I hope that date is the beginning of the group being able to resolve its differences and returning all of its attention to its mission of service.