MLK III at Ebenezer

Human Rights Champion Signs on as Senior Advisor and "Silver Rights" Ambassador of HOPE

ATLANTA, Apr 13, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Operation HOPE (HOPE) Founder, Chairman and CEO John Hope Bryant announced the addition of Martin Luther King III as Senior Advisor to the Office of the Chairman and as an official HOPE "silver rights" spokesman.

King, the president and CEO of the King Center and founder of Realizing the Dream, is a prominent human rights advocate, community activist and a political leader. In addition to his responsibilities to the Office of the Chairman, Mr. King will assist HOPE in promoting financial literacy and empowerment. In recognition of financial literacy month this April, HOPE will release a series of radio ads featuring King, Bryant and HOPE Global spokesman and senior aide to the late Dr. King, Ambassador Andrew Young. The ads will air on Premiere Radio Networks, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications and an Operation HOPE partner.

"Operation HOPE's mission to bring 'silver rights' to the underserved is the next level of civil rights in our nation," said Bryant. "Bringing the experience and dedication of Martin Luther King III to Operation HOPE will help us to continue to promote economic empowerment to the underserved."

The eldest son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King III is an international human rights leader and policy maker in his own right. In 1986, he was elected to political office as an at-large representative of over 700,000 residents of Fulton County, Georgia, and he later went on to serve as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Speaking from the King Center in Atlanta, Martin Luther King III said, "The last major civil rights campaign of my father's life sought to achieve economic equality for sanitation workers in Memphis. Today, I am honored to partner with the Operation HOPE financial literacy programs to provide economic training in communities that need it the most around the world."

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Operation HOPE is America's leading community financial empowerment nonprofit, composed of some of the nation's most powerful executives, decision-makers, bankers and community organizers. To date, HOPE programs have educated 1.2 million people, created some 800 new homeowners and raised more than $500 million in inner-city investments since its founding in 1992. Picture 004

About Operation HOPE, Inc.

Operation HOPE is America's leading nonprofit social investment banking and financial literacy empowerment organization. With more than 400 private sector partners, 1500 nonprofit organizations and schools and 100 government partners in 69 major U.S. cities as well as South Africa, HOPE has raised more than $500 million in its pursuit of educating, assisting and inspiring the next generation of global stakeholders. Through international initiatives and its three principal programs, Banking on Our Future (teaching school children about money), HOPE Coalition America (Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline, 1-888-388-HOPE, financial emergency preparedness and disaster relief), and Walk-In HOPE Centers (loans, computer literacy, understanding banking principles), Operation HOPE has delivered services to more than one million low-wealth individuals and assumed the responsibility of piloting the Silver Rights Movement towards making free enterprise and capitalism relevant to all underserved communities. To learn more about HOPE, visit www.operationhope.org or read our blog at www.operationhope.org/blog.

Martin Luther King III

Martin Luther King III is the oldest son of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King. He serves as Founding President and CEO of Realizing the Dream, Inc. and as President and Chief Executive Officer of the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. King is dedicated to continuing the nonviolent legacy of his parents to eliminate the social, political, and economic injustices perpetuated upon the poor and the oppressed through nonviolent direct action.

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