Walter Fauntroy
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WASHINGTON (ABP) – Former Congressman and Baptist preacher Walter Fauntroy was among three dozen foreign journalists freed Aug. 24 from a Tripoli hotel after five harrowing days of being held captive by loyalists to the formerly powerful Libyan Col. Moammar Qadhafi.
Fauntroy, who served as District of Columbia's non-voting delegate to Congress from 1971 to 1991 and as pastor of Washington’s New Bethel Baptist Church from 1959 until 2009, now is president of the Global Campaign for Middle East Peace, a multi-cultural, interfaith organization seeking peace in the region with primary focus on resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Few details are available about the nature of Fauntroy’s mission, but CNN Senior International Correspondent Matthew Chance, who sent updates from inside the Rexos Hotel on Twitter, said one of the captives was Fauntroy and that he was in Libya on a peace mission.
Chance said the 37 foreigners did not know why soldiers would not permit them to leave the five-star hotel near Qadhafi’s personal compound that had served as a base for international journalists. They finally negotiated for their release with the armed guards, who allowed them to leave in small groups if they arranged their own transportation. They left in cars provided by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Talking to CNN by phone while leaving the compound, Chance described the experience as a "nightmare" and "very frightening." He described the captors as “crazy gunmen” who seemed to blame foreign journalists for Tripoli’s invasion by rebel forces.
Fauntroy, 78, was an associate to Martin Luther King Jr. While in Libya, he sent a message to his successor, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, saying he planned to return in time for dedication of a new MLK memorial on the Washington mall Aug. 28.
During the ordeal he told the UK Telegraph he came to Libya over a week ago and was “working on a long-term effort to rally the genuine spiritual leaders of the world” to work out a peace agreement.
"As a minister who believes in the fervent and effective prayers of the righteous" he requested well-wishers "to pray for deliverance for not only us, but the press corps with whom we have been quartered here, in an effort to carry out our peace mission."
A Washington native, Fauntroy was appointed by King in 1961 as director of the Washington Bureau of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He was Washington coordinator for the historic 1963 March on Washington and directed other famous civil-rights marches, along with the 20th anniversary March on Washington in 1983.
In Congress he was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus. He ran for president in 1972, and remained an activist. In 1984 he was arrested at the South African Embassy as part of the Free South Africa Movement. More recently he was a vocal opponent of gay marriage in Washington and compared the Tea Party movement to the Ku Klux Klan.
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Bob Allen is managing editor of Associated Baptist Press.