By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The in-fighting that plagued the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission in recent years is a thing of the past, the newly reconfigured panel’s director said today.
“This commission is great. It brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, a diversity, which we love,” Executive Director DeShun Scarbrough said. “Everyone is of one accord approaching the one mission that we’re here for, which is to follow the noble tenets espoused by Dr. King.”
Scarbrough made the comments during a break in the inaugural meeting of the revamped commission, formerly a 26-member body but now consisting of 13 members. The Legislature and Gov. Mike Beebe restructured the panel earlier this year, citing concerns that internal turmoil had eroded the commission’s effectiveness.
“I foresee no hidden agendas with anyone on this commission,” Scarbrough said today. “Everybody is about the business. We speak about how we can help as a team.”
Beebe appointed five members to the current commission, and House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, and Senate President Pro Tem Bob Johnson, D-Bigelow, each appointed four members. Beebe had the authority to select a new executive director but chose to retain the sitting director, Scarbrough.
Appointments were completed earlier this month.
Chairman Phil Kaplan of Little Rock, a Beebe appointee, said the smaller commission should be better able to advance the goals of the slain civil rights leader whose name it bears.
“We’re half the size, and hopefully whatever it was with 26 members that prevented them from developing a sense of their role in furthering the mission, whatever that was, I think that getting this smaller group from around the state will allow us to be successful,” Kaplan said.
The commission held a “rebirth ceremony” and dinner Monday night at a west Little Rock restaurant, then convened this morning at another restaurant to discuss organizational matters. Eleven members attended Monday night’s activities and eight attended today’s meeting, Scarbrough said.
Former state Rep. Josetta Wilkins, who sponsored legislation to create the commission in the early 1990s, and her son, state Sen. Hank Wilkins, D-Pine Bluff, who sponsored the legislation this year to restructure the commission, were guests of honor at the dinner and rebirth ceremony Monday night.
“Dr. Josetta Wilkins was the person who sponsored the first bill, for the birth, and in a way Sen. Hank Wilkins gave us our rebirth by restructuring the commission,” Scarbrough said. “We used that as an incentive and a springboard to forge forward with a new beginning, new day, new direction.”
The commission has been in upheaval for years. The agency’s former director, state Sen. Tracy Steele, D-North Little Rock, survived an attempt to oust him 2004, and when he resigned two years later, infighting broke out over selection of a permanent successor.
One member filed a lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of others appointed to the panel. At one point Beebe called the commission an “embarrassment” and refused to name new members to the panel.
