An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 7/29/2021,
on the occasion of Bernard Lafayette's 81st birthday
Prelude | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | Email |
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"It [was] not something you read that causes you to change... it's when you see other individuals fight against the system, and insist that justice will come, and believe that justice will come, even if you have to lose your life."
Early in his life, Bernard Lafayette, Jr. knew that racial and social justice would be central to his life. After seeing the abuse his grandmother received on segregated streetcars, he was motivated to his very core and joined the NAACP at the age of 12. While a freshman at American Baptist Seminary (alongside classmates John Lewis and James Bevel --see Lesson #58 in this series), he studied under James Lawson's nonviolent workshops (see Lesson #79 in this series). By 1961 he was a full participant in the newly-formed SNCC and was among the first wave of Freedom Riders --and was, predictably, on the receiving end of violence and was arrested multiple times.
Later, Dr. Lafayette worked with the SCLC, sharing his experiences and his commitment to social change through nonviolent direct action. Impressed by Lafayette's commitment, in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King appointed Lafayette to the position of National Coordinator of the new Poor Peoples' Campaign; the two men met in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee --on the morning of April 4, 1968. Dr. Lafayette boarded a plane for Washington, D.C. late that afternoon... but history unfolded while his plane was in the air, and nobody from the campaign picked him up at the airport that evening.
(My photo reference for this particular portrait is a detail of Dr. Lafayette from a larger Associated Press photograph from January 1968, in which he is standing at Martin Luther King's left, looking on during a speech in Atlanta.)
Among his many distinguished accomplishments, Dr. Lafayette returned to the American Baptist College of ABT Seminary in Nashville --this time as its President, from 1992 to 1995. He was also the Scholar in Residence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, Georgia; and Pastor emeritus of the Progressive Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Today (literally) at the age of 81 he is the Senior Scholar in Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and also the scholar-in-residence at the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University.
Happy Birthday Dr. Lafayette.
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