Stanley Levison

Stanley Levison

Meeting MLK

Ella J. Baker and her fellow African-American civil-rights activist Bayard Rustin introduced secret Communist Party USA member Stanley Levison to to Martin Luther King, Jr. A special relationship developed; from the late 1950s until King's death, in 1968, it was without a doubt King's closest friendship with a white person. In December of 1956 and January of 1957 Levison served as Rustin's primary sounding board as Rustin drew up the founding-agenda documents for what came to be called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Like Rustin, Levison, and Baker, King and a network of his southern African-American ministerial colleagues hoped that the SCLC could leverage the success of the Montgomery bus boycott into a South-wide attack on segregation and racial discrimination.

District 1199 Cultural Center

In 1982 Advisers to the District 1199 Cultural Center, Inc. New York were:

• Miriam Colon
• Ossie Davis
• Ruby Dee
• Madeline Gilford
• Jack Golodner
• Micki Grant
• Herbert H. Gutman
• Michael Harrington
• Patricia Hills
• Irving Howe
• Harold Leventhal
• Stanley Levison
• Harold Lewis
• Eve Merriam
• Walter Rosenblum
• John Schultz
• Brendan Sexton
• Piri Thomas
• Arthur Waldhorm