Walter Fauntroy’s worrisome absence comes amid legal, financial problems (MLK pal)

Walter E. Fauntroy had been overseas for months when longtime friends gathered on a March evening to discuss the 82-year-old civil rights legend’s worrisome absence and the legal and financial difficulties engulfing him and his wife.

Fauntroy, who helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. plan the 1963 March on Washington and became the District’s first congressional delegate in a century, had just missed a huge gathering in Selma, Ala., to mark the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the brutal confrontation on the Edmund Pettus Bridge that helped spur passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

And where was the retired pastor? His friends have been told that he has been in Dubai, although they don’t know exactly where or what he’s been doing or precisely how long he has been gone. Earlier this month, Fauntroy and his wife of 57 years, Dorothy, filed for bankruptcy protection, and in court documents in that case, a judge quoted Walter Fauntroy as saying that he “is temporarily out of the country and suffered a medical emergency,” without offering any details.

In the offices of the United Black Fund on an avenue in Southeast Washington named for King, an attorney for the Fauntroys, Johnny Barnes, ran through the crises facing the couple, according to two people in attendance.

The urgent problem: The Fauntroy home in Crestwood — where Dorothy Fauntroy, now in her early 80s, still lives and where, friends say, King sat as he and Walter Fauntroy planned the March on Washington — is in danger of foreclosure. According to D.C. Superior Court records, the Fauntroys defaulted on an additional mortgage between 2008 and 2013 and, at one point, owed more than $146,000.

Found by Googling his name:

Longtime Washington, D.C., civil rights leader Walter Fauntroy is believed to have fled to Africa after a bench warrant was issued for his arrest in nearby Prince George's County, Md., and his friends and family are not sure where he is, according to a televised news report.
Fauntroy, who led the movement to restore Washington's at-large Congressional representation and served as its delegate for two decades, is wanted in connection with a bad $50,000 check he allegedly wrote more than six years back for an inauguration party for President Obama, according to WUSA9.
The pastor and former aide to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hasn’t been seen in public in several months, sources said.
Friends and family became suspicious of Fauntroy's whereabouts when he missed former D.C. Mayor Marion Barry's funeral in December and events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Selma march in Alabama earlier this month, according to the report.
Fauntroy, who is 82, allegedly wrote the check to pay for an elaborate party in suburban Maryland sometime after Obama's election in 2008, WUSA9 reported. The party, which Fauntroy planned with others, never happened and the check bounced.
Soon after, Prince George’s County authorities filed a bench warrant against Fauntroy. These warrants are usually issued by a judge for people in contempt of court or who fail to appear at a hearing.

Source

Fauntroy, who led the movement to restore Washington's at-large Congressional representation and served as its delegate for two decades, is wanted in connection with a bad $50,000 check he allegedly wrote more than six years back for an inauguration party for President Obama, according to WUSA9.

Geez. If he just legally changed his name to "US Government", it would be ALL GOOD...

I do remember, indeed. Like the slap-happy "Washington for Washington" ditty in the early mayoral elections, after "home rule."

Don't live there any longer, but I can never be president of the United States. I was born in the District of Columbia.

Guess none of that matters any longer, after Barry Goldwater, John McCain, Ted Cruz, er, ah... and someone else... the name escapes me...

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