A Homecoming Long Overdue

It’s long past time that Preston King be allowed to come home.

King has spent 38 years in self-imposed exile, much of it in England, rather than serve jail time for a draft-dodging conviction. It was 1960--the height of the civil rights movement--when the Army came calling, disrupting the Georgia native’s plans for a graduate education in economics. Now 63, King says he was willing to serve; all he wanted was the same respect accorded the white draftees, who were addressed as “Mister.” Instead, the all-white Georgia draft board addressed him by his first name, a common form of humiliation for African Americans.

The board ordered King to appear for his Army physical, but he returned home instead to Albany, Ga. The draft-dodging conviction, by an all-white jury, followed in short order. King first decided to appeal but, concluding that the effort would be futile, left the country. After time in Africa and Australia, he settled in Britain at the University of Lancaster, where he is a professor of political philosophy.

After nearly four decades, and the deaths of three brothers and his parents, it’s time to write an ending to this sorry chapter of the civil rights era. King should receive a full and unconditional presidential pardon, allowing him to return home and reclaim his U.S. passport.

Former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-N.Y.) is leading the campaign to erase King’s conviction. She has written the Justice Department, arguing that his conviction was “fatally flawed” by racism. The Albany City Council, now racially mixed, agrees that King deserves a pardon, as does the Atlanta Constitution, Georgia’s major newspaper. Even the federal judge who presided over his trial, since retired, acknowledges that King was acting out of moral conviction and was the victim of racism.

The Justice Department says only that it’s investigating the matter. President Clinton can and should pardon King.