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Civil rights leader Bernard Lafayette to help launch Fisk-Belmont social justice initiative. What to know about his legacy.

Nashville Tennessean

Bernard Lafayette is set to speak Thursday at the launch of a social justice collaborative between Fisk University and Belmont University.
Lafayette is a longtime civil rights leader and champion of nonviolence who got his start in Nashville in the 1960s.
Through his work in the civil rights movement, Lafayette became close friends with Martin Luther King Jr. and Rep. John Lewis.

Bernard Lafayette Jr. is a name synonymous with the long history of civil rights in Nashville and across the South.

Lafayette is set to deliver a keynote address Thursday afternoon in Nashville to mark the launch of a social justice collaborative between Fisk University and Belmont University.

“This project is an opportunity for students, faculty and staff at both Fisk and Belmont to learn more about past struggles and advances in social justice and learn the tremendous resources available all of around them to carry the torch forward for human rights," Joyce Espy Searcy, the director of Community Relations at Belmont University, said in a news release. Searcy is also a Fisk University graduate.

The event is scheduled from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the Civil Rights Room at the downtown Nashville Public Library campus. Lafayette is set to speak at 4:30 p.m. Those who wish to attend are asked to RSVP by calling 615-460-6241 or emailing canesha.conger@belmont.edu.

Black leaders march down Jefferson Street at the head of a group of 3000 demonstrators April 19, 1960, and heading toward City Hall on the day of the Z. Alexander Looby bombing. In the first row, are the Rev. C.T. Vivian, left, Diane Nash of Fisk, and Bernard Lafayette of American Baptist Seminary. In the second row are Kenneth Frazier and Curtis Murphy of Tennessee A&I, and Rodney Powell of Meharry. Using his handkerchief in the third row is the Rev. James Lawson, one of the advisors to the students. News reporters believed it marked the first time Rev. Lawson had participated in a demonstration downtown.

Here are three things to know about Lafayette ahead of Thursday's keynote address.

Deep dive:Coverage of the civil rights movement in Nashville

From Freedom Rides to lunch counter sit-ins, Lafayette was a staple in the civil rights movement

Lafayette, a native of Tampa, Florida, got his start in the civil rights movement as a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville in 1958, according to his biography on the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute website. The school was also home to leaders like John Lewis, James Bevel and Diane Nash.

Lafayette helped lead the Freedom Riders, who protested segregation by making bus trips around the South. He survived an attack by Ku Klux Klan members during a visit to Montgomery, Alabama. He was also badly beaten in Selma, Alabama. Additionally, Lafayette organized lunch counter sit-ins to protest segregation in Nashville.

John Lewis, left, Bernard Lafayette, second from left, Paul Brooks, right, and another fellow sit-in demonstrator sit in a courtroom of the Nashville Court House Nov. 21, 1960, for a trial over their protesting at lunch counters in downtown Nashville.

Lewis and Lafayette were also roommates, and their friendship spanned decades until Lewis, who went on to become a U.S. congressman, died in 2020.

"A week before he passed, (Lewis) wanted to talk to me," Lafayette told The Tennessean in 2020. "I realized he was ill and was going through these struggles with his health. When it was over with, I found out he just wanted to hear my voice. We didn't have a long conversation, it was only about his health and how he was doing. I didn't expect this to happen. I didn't expect him to leave us this soon."

Lafayette:John Lewis' leadership driven by 'sincerity without arrogance'

Lafayette was part of the inner circle of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hired Lafayette as the program director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967, his King Institute biography said.

King advocated for Lafayette and his group after the attack on their Freedom Riders in Montgomery, securing a military escort to keep them safe as they pressed on into the South. The two became close friends as they worked together to advance civil rights, mobilize voters and teach nonviolence before King's death.

Bernard Lafayette, right, stands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 —the year King was assassinated.

Lafayette was with King in Memphis the day before he was slain, per previous Tennessean reporting. They'd planned to get together again the next day in Washington, D.C. to talk more about Lafayette's new role as coordinator for King's Poor People's Campaign, a national push to end poverty.

King never made the trip.

"The last thing he said to me is that we needed to figure out a way to institutionalize and internationalize nonviolence," Lafayette told The Tennessean in 2013.

Lafayette has worked ever since to carry on King's legacy of nonviolence.

From 2013:Lafayette carries on mission of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Lafayette co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

Freedom rider Bernard Lafayette, Jr., arrives during the 57th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday March in Selma, Ala., on Sunday March 6, 2022.

Lafayette co-founded of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a driving force for students in the early civil rights movement. It began in 1960, according to its website, and networked college campuses as they worked on a wide variety of issues spanning everything from voting to adult education.

Read more about the history and legacy of the committee at snccdigital.org.

Find reporter Rachel Wegner at RAwegner@tennessean.com or on Twitter @rachelannwegner.

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