He was a community organizer, rallying for tenants rights in Annapolis' public housing. Later, he was elected to local office, serving on the Annapolis City Council.
And 21 years ago, Carl O. Snowden established the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Committee Inc., which sponsors a dinner in Anne Arundel County honoring community members in the name of the slain civil rights leader.
This year, Snowden said, the event will be particularly poignant as the inauguration of the nation's first black president - Barack Obama - will follow.
"We want to keep the legacy of Dr. King alive, and the best way is to honor those men and women who on a daily basis fight to implement his unfinished social justice agenda," Snowden said. "Ironically, the election of Barack Obama is not the fulfillment of the dream of Dr. King; it's just another step in developing the community that he envisioned. I can't tell you the number of people, black people, who never thought they would see the day of the election of a black man. It is really significant. His election signals a major shift in race relations in the country. I think Dr. King would be so proud of it."
Snowden, 55, who was named by state Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler in 2007 to lead the first Office of Civil Rights, has long been a civil rights activist in Anne Arundel County. In the late 1960s he led a student walkout from Annapolis High School to protest discrimination. He attended the University of the District of Columbia, but never graduated.
He later worked as a community organizer, enlisting a lawyer to provide free legal aid through a state government program to fight against perceived inequities in the city's public housing.
Snowden served as an Annapolis alderman representing Ward 4 and operated a civil rights consulting firm, which sued various state and local government agencies in discrimination cases.
In the 1997 Democratic primary for Annapolis mayor, he narrowly lost, but was later hired by then- county executive Janet S. Owens as her intergovernmental relations officer.
Snowden serves as chairman of the board of directors of the MLK Committee, which is one of many sponsors of the event and can be found on the Web at www.mlkmd.org. The dinner has grown in size significantly since the beginning.
