Civil rights icon still has work to do

Bernard LaFayette Jr. has been a civil rights activist most of his life, accumulating enough bumps, bruises, broken bones and death threats to retire in one piece.

Not him. At the age of 76 he’s still at it and has no intentions of retiring. He says he’s just got “too much to do.”

“My work isn’t complete yet and it won’t be until I’m no longer here,” LaFayette said in a recent interview. “Until then, I’ll just keep working to promote nonviolence."

Few leaders involved in America’s civil rights movement have been as active as he’s been – a man on a mission who believes in resolving disputes through mutual understanding, not violence.

He’s been that way since venturing into dangerous neighborhoods where guns and knives ruled the day, where segregated lunch counters and bus stations were targeted for protests. Those sites often wound up as civil rights battlegrounds.

LaFayette has never sought headlines, but they seem to follow him wherever he goes, tackling one civil rights challenge after another.

“I don’t do what I do for praise,” he said. “I’m on this mission and am happy to see results, not awards.”

That hasn’t slowed international civil rights organizations from honoring his many accomplishments.

LaFayette’s most recent honor has been the 2016 Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace – given to him during a ceremony in South Africa in November.

Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were among the world’s most admired civil rights activists and both would be assassinated.

The award, presented to LaFayette by Gandhi’s granddaughter, was a surprise, but he had a feeling something big was about to happen.

“A friend called and said I had been nominated for the award, but I thought he was teasing me,” said LaFayette, adding, “I was stunned and elated, especially when I learned later I would be receiving it.”

A veteran of civil rights protests stretched over five decades of activism that began with lunch counter sit-ins in Nashville, LaFayette hit his stride as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

His most recent book: “In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma,” details LaFayette’s civil rights efforts in the little Alabama community where he was told that: “White folks are too mean and black folks are too scared.”

LaFayette had already earned his civil rights spurs and lumps at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery in 1961 when he and other “Freedom Riders” were attacked by angry whites on Mothers’ Day weekend, waiting for them with a variety of weapons.

“I tried to protect myself as I went down, but I was kicked in the side, cracking three ribs,” he recalled. “There wasn’t much I could do.”

Two years later, he embarked on what amounted to a one-man voter registration campaign in Selma, where only 300 blacks were registered to vote. Dallas County had about 45,000 residents at the time.

On June 12, 1963, he was badly beaten by a white thug during one of his nighttime registration efforts. It was the same night that Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers was shot to death in the driveway of his home.

Two years after being assaulted in Selma, he became a leader in planning the historic Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March – an event at first delayed by a violent incident on the Edmund Pettus Bridge where innocent protesters were assaulted by law enforcement officials.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis was as active as LaFayette during those hectic, dangerous days in Selma and his admiration for his friend remains today.

“No one, but no one, who lived through the creation and development of the movement for voting rights in Selma is better prepared to tell this story than Bernard LaFayette,” Lewis said.

LaFayette believes his most positive contribution in Selma was “taking time” to produce local leaders who could “sustain themselves through the struggle.”

It didn’t take long for Selma’s black leaders to realize LaFayette had the experience and the nerve to lead them toward a new day, a time when black officials would become mayors, police chiefs and county commissioners.

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Andrew Young, who once served as mayor of Atlanta, as well as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, commended LaFayette for having “braved threats and intimidation to serve as a witness to the power of nonviolent action.

“Bernard has been at the center of thought and action that attempts to free the world of violence and hatred,” Young said.

When civil and voting rights leaders eventually completed their historic protests in Alabama and other Southern states, they moved on to other challenges across the country. LaFayette was one of them.

At one point LaFayette went to work on the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement and became an ordained Baptist minister, once having served as president of the American Baptist Theological Seminary.

Word of LaFayette’s accomplishments quickly spread across America and his services have been sought by other officials in need of someone who can teach them about nonviolent ways to end heated controversies.

An example of just how good he is in that department occurred during President Obama’s visit to Selma last year to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March.

As Obama rose to deliver an important speech, a small group of protesters beat drums and yelled to get his attention.

Aware of what was happening, LaFayette left his seat in a section for special guests and quickly went to where the noise was coming from. He began to speak quietly to the leader — asking him what the problem was.

Within a few minutes he had resolved the group’s concerns. The loud noise ceased and the leader thanked LaFayette for his help.

“I never thought I’d have the opportunity to accomplish so much and to live as long as I have during my days as a movement leader,” LaFayette said.

His life expectancy once looked like it was in danger of being shortened when he and other “Freedom Riders” arrested in Mississippi were taken after their beatings at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery.

Those in his group were jailed in Jackson, Mississippi, then sent to Parchman State Prison Farm, where they spent several weeks under virtual slave conditions

LaFayette’s most vivid memory of the civil rights movement occurred in April 1968 when the stood with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

They talked about the future of continued protests challenging civil rights inequities when King surprised LaFayette with a “request.”

“Dr. King said it was crucial for me to help institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence,” LaFayette said. “I have spent my life since that time doing exactly what he wanted.”

A few hours after King made that request, the civil rights leader was assassinated on the balcony of the motel.

LaFayette had left Memphis by that time. He was his way to Washington, D.C., to hold a press conference announcing the opening of headquarters for the Poor People's Campaign. As soon as that project ended, he began carrying out King’s mandate to institutionalize and internationalize Nonviolence.

Somewhat of a political junkie who follows the latest news out of Washington, LaFayette said he was not surprised by Donald Trump’s relatively easy victory over Hillary Clinton in this year’s presidential election.

“He may not have held public office before, but he knew how to use and capture the media in a very effective way,” LaFayette said. “He’s always been an entertainer and that helped him.”

Lafayette continues to work hard, recently serving as editor of "The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North."

He also is kept busy speaking about nonviolence and can be found somewhere around America addressing important groups of community leaders.

He and his wife, Kate, who divide their time between homes in Tuskegee and Atlanta, have been married 47 years. They have two children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

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