Lafayette, Bernard (1940–)

Rev. Dr. Lafayette started his long career in civil rights activism as a part of the Freedom Riders campaign in 1959 for which he was jailed in Birmingham. Subsequently, he helped form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. He worked through SNCC to direct the Alabama Voter Registration Project (1962). He also was appointed by Martin Luther King Jr. as the the national program administrator for SCLC and coordinated the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. In 2009, he accepted an appointment as Distinguished Senior Scholar in Residence at Emory’s Candler School of Theology.