Scholar, minister and activist the Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. was the guest speaker at L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center’s “Perspectives on Black-Jewish Relations in The Fight for Civil Rights” discussion held Dec. 6, on the 68th anniversary of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
As a boy, John listened through the door after bedtime as his father’s friends complained about the Klan. One Sunday as a teenager, he heard Dr. King preach on the radio. As a college student in Tennessee, he signed up for Jim Lawson’s workshops on the tactic of nonviolent civil disobedience. John Lewis was getting something inside his head, an idea he couldn’t shake that took hold of him – that nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience were the means to change laws, but also change hearts, and change minds, and change nations, and change the world.
In 1965, Lewis and fellow activist Hosea Williams led what was planned as a peaceful 54-mile march through Alabama from Selma to Montgomery. The march, a protest of the discriminatory practices and Jim Crow laws that prevented African Americans from voting, would be remembered in history as “Bloody Sunday,” one of the most dramatic and violent incidents of the American Civil Rights Movement.
The NAACP plans to highlight 110 years of civil rights history, and the current fight for voting rights, criminal justice reform, economic opportunity and education quality during its 110th national convention now happening in Detroit.
National Food and Beverage Foundation President Brent Rosen launched the petition, which says the cost of installation of a statue of Leah Chase would be paid for by the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.
On this day May 20, 1961, C.O.R.E. organized Freedom Rides resumed in Birmingham after tremendous violence. Brought to you by the Black365 Calendar. For more information visit www.Black365.US
I was born of a White mother and a Black father in 1961 in Southern California during a time when America was experiencing segregation across the nation. Although many of us in California did not feel the same effects as many of our relatives in the South, segregation was still alive and well throughout the country. The Civil Rights Movement was in its beginning stages and the 50’s and 60’s were pivotal in changing the face and climate of America. The Civil Rights Movement was organized by African Americans with the goal to help end racial discrimination and provide equal rights to all under the law.
Bernard LaFayette Jr., whose memoir “In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma” was released in paperback earlier this year, has been awarded the 2016 Mahatma Gandhi International Award for Reconciliation and Peace.
The film, which was produced by Kathleen Dowdey, Charles Floyd Johnson and Donna Brown Guillaume is the first major documentary biography of the courageous civil rights hero, congressional leader and champion of human rights.
Weekly Facts about Black History.