An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 12/2/2020
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"I was of the impression that the Movement was an act of God in history and that I was simply one of the persons that he had called forth to be involved in it... Here was a people who had been oppressed and that they were going to change that condition."
Meet James L. Bevel, the "father of voting rights" (and incidentally the husband of Diane Nash, subject of Lesson #52 in this series). Born in 1936 Mississippi, Bevel dropped out of American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville to work in the civil rights movement. He joined the student sit-ins in Nashville (where his path first intersected with Diane Nash), and became a Freedom Rider in 1961. The following year he joined Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and is credited as the initial suggester of what would become the 1963 March on Washington.
Significantly in those years, Bevel was the principal architect of what came to be known as the Children's Crusade --using middle school and high school students in the Birmingham, AL marches. On May 2, 1963, news of the planned march from the 16th Street Baptist Church to the Mayor's office prompted Birmingham Police & Fire Commissioner Eugene Connor to use police dogs and fire hoses to aggressively stop the march. The subsequent chaotic scenes made the evening news and led to national (and international) condemnation, opening the door to constructive negotiations and ultimately leading to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Bevel also worked with Dr. King in Selma in 1965 and in the Chicago Open Housing movement in 1966, organizing and leading protest marches that included opposition to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Bevel was present with Dr. King at the moment of his assassination at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, though he remained unconvinced that James Earl Ray was the assassin --years later Bevel even pushed (unsuccessfully) to reopen the Ray case. For obvious reasons Bevel's name periodically comes up in King assassination conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately Bevel lost a great deal of his credibility in the civil rights movement during the 1980's when he became a supporter of Ronald Reagan, and later Lyndon LaRouche's vice presidential candidate in 1992. His last significant act was the proposal and organization of the Day of Atonement/"Million Man March" in 1995. Bevel's public career came to a pretty decisive end when he was charged and convicted of incest in 2008 --he was sentenced to 15 years in prison but died of pancreatic cancer during his appeal.
Next page - Lesson 59: Lucy Parsons