- Founder and executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization
- Conceived the pro-Communist project, Pastors for Peace
- Has supported Communist Cuba and visited Saddam-controlled Iraq
- “Long live the creative example of the Cuban Revolution!”
The Reverend Lucius Walker, Jr. is executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), an entity he founded in 1967. Born in Roselle, New Jersey, he graduated from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1954. Walker received a Master of Divinity degree from Andover Newton Theological School in 1958, according to his IFCO biography, and a Master of Science degree in Social Work from the University of Wisconsin in 1963. He served as Associate General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA from 1973 through 1978, returning thereafter to IFCO, “an ecumenical agency whose mission is to help forward the struggles of oppressed people for justice and self-determination.” In 1984 Rev. Walker became, and remains today, pastor of Salvation Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, which his biography describes as “dedicated to preaching the social gospel.” Through IFCO, Rev. Walker, an African-American, has formed or funded dozens of other organizations. Among them are the National Anti-Klan Network (now known as the Center for Democratic Renewal)(to take “leadership in investigating the bombings of Black churches”) and the Ecumenical Minority Bail Bond Fund (“to provide support for political prisoners of color”). Rev. Walker received an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree from Malcolm X College in Chicago in 1969. Among his many other honors are the Sandino Award, given by the then-Castro-aligned Sandinista Government of Nicaragua, and the Carlos Findley Award and the Order of Friendship, both bestowed by the Government of Cuba
“In 1984, Rev. Walker was shot and wounded in a terrorist attack on innocent civilians by Nicaraguan contras as he led an IFCO study delegation to Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast region,” says his IFCO biography. “In response to the attack, Rev. Walker conceived the project Pastors for Peace, which organizes humanitarian aid caravans as a way to assist the victims of US foreign policy. IFCO/Pastors for Peace has delivered caravans of aid to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Chiapas, and Cuba.”
Critical of the American policy toward Castro's Marxist Cuba, Walker has endorsed Project USA/Cuba-InfoMed, which seeks 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 Cuba.”
At the invitation of then-Congresswoman Cynthia A. McKinney (D.-Georgia), Rev. Walker testified on April 13, 2000 before the House International Relations Committee hearings on children's rights in Cuba. He spoke both as executive director of IFCO and as "co-chair of the National Committee for the Return of Elian Gonzalez to His Father in Cuba." He described his perspective as coming from "more than 40 visits to Cuba, the first in 1981 and most of them in the recent or in the last 10 years." "It has been my observation," Rev. Walker said in sworn testimony, "that Cuban children…are a wonderful combination of self-awareness, self-esteem, respect for adults, love of country, knowledge of culture, and understanding of international geography and history which I wish were equally true in every part of the world." "I have traveled extensively," Rev. Walker's testimony continued, "and in no other country have I ever seen more healthy children, as well as self-confident, more secure and well-behaved children, as I have seen in Cuba…. I have never seen an unhealthy child in Cuba."
Applications from US citizens seeking to get medical training in Cuba are administered through IFCO.
In addition to giving aid and support to the Castro government, Rev. Walker reportedly traveled “frequently to Iraq, usually alongside Ramsey Clark” during Saddam Hussein’s regime. Ramsey Clark is the son of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark and served as U.S. Attorney General from 1967 until 1969 during President Lyndon Johnson’s Administration. An eccentric who defended Nazi war criminals and for a time supported former Trotskyite Lyndon LaRouche, Clark is now a radical activist who works hand in glove with International ANSWER, a front group for the communist Workers World Party, which supports the totalitarian Communist dictatorship in North Korea. Reverend Walker has made IFCO a member of the Steering Committee of International ANSWER.
Walker is a longtime supporter of Communist Party USA causes.
Quote: In a November 2000 speech in Havana, Rev. Lucius Walker reportedly 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!”
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