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In an
agreement with national Chairman Roy Innes, Celes King III
organized the California State Organization of CORE. It was in a period after the Resurrection City experiment when almost all of the other State Organizations and Chapters around the Nation were either dormant or still in the process of phasing out when along comes California Bail Bond Industry leader and renown civil Rights Fighter Celes King III. Celes King III also happened to be a very popular veteran of that World War II noble experiment, the Tuskegee Airmen, the only Black Air Fighter Squadron in the entire War. These young Black Men manned the only Fighter Squadron in the War which never lost any of the hundreds of Bombers it escorted over occupied Europe.
Celes King
III, together with the dedicated supporters also brought some
other key qualifications to the job of State Chairman of CORE
California. Somewhere
along the way Celes King had become a General in the
California National Guard, as well as the first African
American in California to become a General bonding Agent.
In this particular capacity the General, who is always
an active promoter of others, was able to sponsor most of the
other first stage African Americans entering the Bail Bond
Business in Southern California.
The General
served several terms as President of the National and State
Associations of Bail Bond Agents.
General King, had also gained a valuable set of
experience tools as a longtime President of the Los Angeles
branch of the NAACP,. In
that capacity he had been able to nurture such future talented
leaders such as the young Maxine Waters, Yvonne Burke and a
host of others. Celes King served as President of the Los Angeles City human Relations Commission and in that capacity created the first “Rumor Control Operation and other innovations in the wake of the 1965 Watts Rebellion. Celes King State Chair of CORE-CA frequently joined with NAACP, Urban League and all of the other Civil Rights and Civil Liberties oriented organizations in press conferences and mobilizations and even conducted hearings on the firing of the Police Chief.
Immediately upon release of the 1990 Census and 2000 decennial population data sets Celes King III, State CORE Chairman joined with his confidante Adrian Dove a former top Census Bureau Official who is also the CORE CA State President, drafted the only comprehensive set of proposed statewide boundaries for redistricting California for the coming decade. In 1991 when the Legislature and Governor, of different parties had a disagreement which threw the decision to the State Support and King and Dove were admitted to the Bar to deliver oral arguments to the Supreme Court on behalf of interests of the Black community. Their recommendations ware largely adopted for southern California and resulted in the retention of all five Assembly and the two Senate seats held by the Black community for the decade. UCLA Library Special Collections Whenever there appears in our midst a person of Legendary leadership proportions
It is good
idea for us all to do some examination of the elements that
caused that person to develop as such.
A team of researchers
from UCLA has completed a thorough study
of the
barrier breaking and pioneering life of Celes King III.
Although he was born in Chicago, his parents had moved there
from Texas and Louisiana.
He came with his parents to Los Angeles as a teenager
and graduated from Manual Arts High School. His father Celestus King II owned a liquor store in downtown
L.A. and his uncle was manager of the Dunbar Hotel. The young
Celes King was able to work in both these family enterprises
where he learned a lot about business in general. Through the
elegant Dunbar which was the only hotel at the time where
African American celebrities could stay.
He was able to meet and interview the likes of Langston
Hughes, Billie Holiday, W.E.B. DuBois, Roy Wilkins, James
Farmer, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Joe Louis
and Lena Horne, almost on a daily basis.
Celes has often commented that during those terrible
days of segregated neighborhoods, the only positive side was
that all of the Black talent and role models were in the same
neighborhood regardless of income level. While he was
attending college he also maintained a hobby of studying about
airplanes. When
World War II came along in 1941 he enlisted in the Air Force,
and amazingly was successful in becoming a member of the
coveted Tuskegee Airmen class number four.
After returning from WWI, Celes like a whole lot of other
young men launched into a career of his own, deciding to get
into the Bail Bond Business. Married to his childhood
sweetheart Anita Lugo King, the couple opened one of the first
African American owned Bond Agencies.
At that time there was the beginnings of mass arrests
of civil disobedience protestors from CORE and other
movements. Celes King Bail-Bond quickly became the primary
Bail Bond Man writer for Civil Rights Protestors who were
being arrested all over the country. It was at this time that
Celes began to take a leadership role in the Civil Rights
Movement in L.A. having chaired the City Human Relations
Commission and NAACP and CORE.
He also continued to excel as an innovator having
created the Rumor Control operations after the Watts Uprising
of 1965, and CORE Amnesty Center to help Haitians and others
after passage of the Amnesty Act.
For the past
16years General King has served as confidante and advisor to
Governors, Mayors, Police Chiefs, Sheriffs and other elected
officials and has served as State Chairman of California CORE
dealing with individual cases,
media campaigns, and pivotal actions such as the 1990
and2000 redistricting of the state and Federal Legislatures.
Everywhere General King Goes, he manages to take someone with
him. He has
mentored countless numbers of young people and many of these
by now have risen to roles of prominence while retaining a
sense of service
Celes and
Anita King raised a family
of four children and now have grand children and
great-grandchildren. The Celes King Bail Bond Office side-rooms have become the
unofficial Town Hall of South Central Los Angeles Los Angeles is indeed fortunate that Celes King III, decided to stay here and make his massive contributions to the betterment of everyone in our town.
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Copyright: 7/15/2003 |