Bernard LaFayette, Civil Rights Leader and Selma Voting Rights Organizer, Dies at 85

Bernard LaFayette, a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement and key organizer behind Selma’s voter registration campaign that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died at age 85. His son, Bernard LaFayette III, announced his father's death from a heart attack on Thursday morning.

LaFayette was instrumental in setting the stage for Selma’s voting rights campaign. Two years before “Bloody Sunday,” when future congressman John Lewis and other marchers were beaten on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, LaFayette had already begun laying the groundwork for the advances in voting rights that would follow.

Born and raised in Tampa, Florida, LaFayette was one of a delegation of Nashville students who helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960. The SNCC organized desegregation and voting rights campaigns across the South. Despite initial setbacks, LaFayette insisted on trying to register voters in Selma. Named director of the Alabama Voter Registration Campaign in 1963, he moved to Selma and worked with his former wife, Colia Liddell, to build local leadership capacity.

The dangers LaFayette faced were numerous. On the same night Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi, LaFayette survived an assassination attempt. He was beaten outside his home before his assailant pointed a gun at him. His calls for help brought out a neighbor with a rifle, and LaFayette found himself standing between the two men, asking his neighbor not to shoot. The FBI later identified this as part of a conspiracy to kill civil rights workers.

LaFayette’s work extended beyond Selma. In 1961, he dropped out of college to join an official Freedom Ride, one of many that sought to force Southern authorities to comply with court rulings against segregation. He was beaten in Montgomery and arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, becoming one of more than 300 Freedom Riders sent to Parchman Prison.

After Selma, LaFayette moved to Chicago, where he trained Black youth to become leaders in the Chicago Freedom Movement and helped organize tenant unions. He also worked alongside Andrew Young and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to prepare for Martin Luther King Jr.’s Northern campaign. By 1968, LaFayette was the national coordinator of King’s Poor People’s Campaign and was with King at the Lorraine Motel on the morning of his assassination.

Following King's death, LaFayette returned to American Baptist College to complete his bachelor’s degree and then earned a master’s and doctorate from Harvard University. He later served in various roles, including director of Peace and Justice in Latin America, chairperson of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development, and minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tuskegee, Alabama.

LaFayette’s legacy extends internationally as well. He conducted nonviolence workshops with groups like the African National Congress in South Africa and worked with violent groups in Latin America during civil conflicts. DeMark Liggins, president of the SCLC, noted that LaFayette’s legacy lives on in the thousands he helped both in America and abroad.

In his memoir, “In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma,” LaFayette wrote about the ever-present threat of death during those early years of organizing. He believed that the value of life lies not in longevity but in what people do to give it significance.