The largest black organization in the United States, the National Baptist Convention USA, has dealt a fresh blow to President Bush's choice of black jurist Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court.
The group called on its 33,000 black churches and 8.7 million black members to "mount immediately a massive lobbying campaign" to defeat Thomas' nomination in the U.S. Senate.The denomination, in a resolution adopted by voice vote at its 111th annual meeting here, called Thomas' conservative ideology "bemuddled, confused and misinformed."
It accused Bush of "packing the bench with ideologues who would rather blame the victims of society than give them the tools that give access to the fruits of our democracy."
Thomas, who is now a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, has come under attack from a growing coalition of blacks and liberal rights groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the AFL-CIO, for his conservative views.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is to begin hearings on the nomination Sept. 10.
The panel's charge is to recommend to the full Senate whether it should approve Thomas for the seat on the high court vacated by retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Conservatives, too, were gearing up to influence the senators' votes.
But an early effort ran into trouble when it attacked some Democratic senators by name, prompting Bush to denounce the campaign.