Political Quotes

“I proudly rise today to join the city of Selma, Alabama, in celebrating May 14, 2022, as Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. Day, honoring the extraordinary contributions of civil rights leader, activist, and advocate of nonviolence Reverend Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr. Dr. LaFayette made his mark in history as a civil rights organizer, minister, educator, and lecturer whose contributions to the civil rights movement have garnered him national recognition as a leading authority on the strategy of nonviolent social change. As a student advocate in the 1960s, he played a leading role in the early organizing of the Selma voting rights movement. Dr. LaFayette was an active participant in the sit-in campaign and the Nashville student movement, and he worked closely throughout the 1960s with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, and the American Friends Service Committee. Dr. LaFayette began his activism as a student at American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was taught by teacher and SCLC mentor James Lawson the techniques of nonviolence. Dr. LaFayette learned alongside fellow students John Lewis, James Bevel, and Diane Nash before participating in the Nashville student lunch counter sit-ins in the 1960s. From there, his passion for civil rights continued to blossom, leading him to become one of the cofounders of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.…”