* Following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Butts joined a group of rioting students from Morehouse College in Atlanta in firebombing a local business.

* In January 1987, attorneys Alton Maddox and C. Vernon Mason dispatched Butts to represent them at a meeting where New York Governor Mario Cuomo was slated to sit with black leaders and discuss the possibility of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the recent death of an African American named Michael Griffith in a racially charged incident in Howard Beach, New York. Later in 1987, Mason and Maddox infamously joined with Al Sharpton in perpetrating a massive hoax in which they falsely claimed that a black teenager named Tawana Brawley had been raped and brutalized by a gang of whites.

* In 1993 Butts expressed his desire to crush a pile of rap CDs, music videos, and audiotapes with a steamroller because of their “vile, ugly, low, abusive” lyrics.

* In April 2001, former U.S. President Bill Clinton spoke, on Butts’ invitation, to the students and faculty at SUNY’s Old Westbury campus. While introducing Clinton, Butts praised his “ongoing commitment to leadership development and citizen service, and to bridging those gaps that divide people from different backgrounds.”

* In May 2005, Butts brought Charles Rangel, the Democratic congressman from New York, to deliver the commencement speech at SUNY-Old Westbury.

* Butts was one of the founders of the Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC), a not-for-profit community-based organization serving Harlem.

* Butts was instrumental in the establishment of the Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change, a public intermediate and high school under the direction of the Abyssinian Development Corporation.

* Butts has served as president of Africare, and as board chairman of the Harlem Branch YMCA.

* Butts has taught Black Church History at Fordham University and was an adjunct professor in City College of New York’s African Studies Department.

* Butts today is president of the Council of Churches of the City of New York; board chairman of Managers for the C.T. Walker Housing Corporation; vice-chair of the Board of Directors of United Way of New York City; a member of the Central Park Conservancy Board; and chairman of the National Affiliate Development Initiative of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS.

* Butts currently delivers a bi-weekly Sunday radio sermon at 7:00 a.m. on New York’s 98.7 (KISS) FM.