The Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette, co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, will speak about his life and experiences as a leader in the Civil Rights movement March 14, at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Bowen School of Law. 

The free event will take place at 6 p.m. at the Friday Courtroom. A reception and book signing will follow.

LaFayette is a minister, educator, lecturer, and authority on the strategy of nonviolent social change. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960, was a leader of the Nashville Movement in 1960, a member of the Freedom Riders in 1961, and participated in the 1965 Selma Movement.

He directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962 and was appointed national program administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and national coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign.

An ordained minister, LaFayette served on the faculties of Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta and Alabama State University in Montgomery, where he was dean of the Graduate School. He also was principal of Tuskegee Institute High School in Tuskegee, Alabama, and a teaching fellow at Harvard University.

LaFayette is currently a distinguished-senior-scholar-in-residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

The event is sponsored by the Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity, Bowen School of Law, Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site, and National Park Service.

For more information, call 501.569.8932.