Lucius Walker Jr.

Lucius Walker Jr.

Overview

* Founder and executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization
* Conceived the pro-Communist project, Pastors for Peace
* Supported Communist Cuba and visited Saddam-controlled Iraq
* Died on September 7, 2010


Reverend Lucius Walker, Jr. was born in Roselle, New Jersey on August 3, 1930. He graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1954. Four years later he received a Master of Divinity degree from Andover Newton Theological School, and in 1963 he earned an MS in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin. As of May 1964, Walker was a sponsor of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee, a Communist Party USA front group.

In 1967 Walker founded the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO). Two years later he received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Malcolm X College in Chicago.

Walker served as Associate General Secretary of the National Council of Churches from 1973 through 1978, at which time he returned to IFCO as its Executive Director. In 1984 he became pastor of Salvation Baptist Church (in Brooklyn, New York), which IFCO says was “dedicated to preaching the social gospel.” In 1984 Walker conceived the project Pastors for Peace, which, according to IFCO, has organized “humanitarian aid caravans as a way to assist the victims of U.S. foreign policy … [in] Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chiapas, and Cuba.”

A longtime critic of American policy toward Fidel Castro‘s Cuba, Walker endorsed Project USA/Cuba-InfoMed, which sought to “increase awareness about health achievements in Cuba and the impact of U.S. policies on the health of the Cuban people,” and “to build opposition to the U.S. embargo” of that nation.

In 1994 Walker was an initiator of the International Peace for Cuba Appeal (IPCA), which called for normalized trade relations with, and an end to travel restrictions to, Cuba. IPCA was an affiliate of the International Action Center, which was itself a Workers World Party front group. Other noteworthy initiators if IPCA included CIA agent-turned-Cuban spy Philip Agee, professor Noam Chomsky, and leftist Democrat congressmen John Conyers and Charles Rangel.

At the invitation of then-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Walker testified on April 13, 2000 at the House International Relations Committee hearings on children’s rights in Cuba. Based on the “more than 40 visits to Cuba” that Walker said he had made since 1981, he pronounced: “I have never seen an unhealthy child in Cuba.” In a November 2000 speech in Havana, Walker proclaimed: “Long live the creative example of the Cuban Revolution! Long live the wisdom and heartfelt concern for the poor of the world by Fidel Castro!”

During Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, Walker made frequent visits to that country — often accompanied by Ramsey Clark, founder of International ANSWER. During his tenure with IFCO, Walker established his organization as a member of ANSWER’s steering committee.

In 2009 Walker served as an advisory committee member for the Independent Progressive Politics Network. That same year, he was a board of directors member for Healthcare-Now.

Walker died of a heart attack on September 7, 2010.

 | 
© Copyright 2024, DiscoverTheNetworks.org