Concern about black-on-black crime has the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials looking to start special facilities to help troubled African-American youths turn their lives around.

GABEO officials are exploring the possibility of securing space at the struggling Morris Brown College near downtown Atlanta and purchasing the old Boggs Academy, a now-closed private preparatory school in Keysville, near Augusta. The aim is to turn them into Stop the Violence Academies.

"We don't have the luxury of doing nothing," said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks (D-Atlanta), GABEO president. "This is just an idea being discussed and floated."

The academies would provide counseling, intervention and other services to youths who are homeless or in foster care or the juvenile court system, Brooks said.

The Atlanta and Keysville campuses would serve as a model to be duplicated across the state.

"This would be an opportunity for them to get back on their feet, ... to straighten their lives out," Brooks said.

So far, GABEO has had only informal talks with Morris Brown and Boggs Academy property owners.

The academy idea will be discussed during GABEO's 38th annual summer convention in Savannah, which starts Thursday. Grappling with crime and violence in the black community will once again get attention during the three-day gathering at Savannah State University's Jordan School of Business.

On the convention agenda is a "Stopping the Violence, Saving Our Children, Ending the Carnage" teen summit.

Convention honorees include the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a Southern Christian Leadership Conference co-founder and a former president; and state Reps. Bob Holmes (D-Atlanta), Calvin Smyre (D-Columbus) and David Lucas (D-Macon), Georgia's longest serving African-American lawmakers.

Shuttlesworth, retired and living in Cincinnati, led the fight for civil rights in Birmingham. Previous honorees have been the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and the Rev. Joseph Lowery and Evelyn Lowery.

"This man has been an unsung hero," Brooks said of Shuttlesworth. "We don't want Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth to be forgotten."

Founded in 1970, GABEO has nearly 1,000 members statewide and meets three times a year. Conference information is available at GABEO.org.