; Whereas Dr. Walker served as Dr. King’s chief of staff in the early 1960s, organizing landmark demonstrations throughout Alabama and the South; Whereas Dr. Walker served as the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) from 1960 to 1964, organizing numerous protests and demonstrations against segregation in Alabama which came to be known as Project C; Whereas, in May 1961, Dr. Walker was one of 11 leaders arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, during the Freedom Riders protest; Whereas, in April 1963, Dr. Walker was instrumental in assembling and distributing Dr. King’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail , one of the most important and influential documents of the civil rights movement; Whereas, in August 1963, Dr. Walker was a key organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the occasion of Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech; Whereas Dr. Walker’s leadership of SCLC transformed it from a local grassroots organization into a national force in the civil rights movement; Whereas, following his time with SCLC, Dr. Walker served as senior pastor at Canaan Baptist Church of Christ in Harlem, New York City, for more than 30 years; Whereas Dr. Walker advocated for equality and justice in New York City, chairing the Consortium for Central Harlem Development and fighting for affordable housing, better schools, programs that reduce homelessness and hunger, and progress on other important issues; Whereas Dr. Walker served as advisor on urban affairs for then-New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller; Whereas Dr. Walker fought for justice and freedom abroad, forming the International Freedom Mobilization, a movement to oppose apartheid and racial injustice in South Africa; Whereas Dr. Walker helped supervise South Africa’s first fully representative elections in 1994, which resulted in Nelson Mandela becoming the country’s first post-apartheid president; Whereas Dr. Walker was the National Action Network’s first board chairman