Join us at the UA Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, 1201 McMath Avenue, in the Friday Courtroom at 6 p.m on Tuesday, March 14, where Civil Rights Movement luminary, Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette, Jr., will talk about his life and experiences in the movement. LaFayette is a minister, educator, lecturer, and an authority on the strategy on nonviolent social change. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, he was a leader of the Nashville Movement in 1960, a Freedom Rider in 1961, and participated in the1965 Selma Movement. He directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962, and was appointed National Program Administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and National Coordinator of the 1968 Poor Peoples’ Campaign by Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition, Dr. LaFayette served as Director of Peace and Justice in Latin America; Chairperson of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development; Director of the PUSH Excel Institute; and minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tuskegee, Alabama.
An ordained minister, Dr. LaFayette earned his B.A. from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, and his Ed.M. and Ed.D from Harvard University. He has 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.
His publications include In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma (Civil Rights and Struggle), the Curriculum and Training Manual for the Martin Luther King, Jr., Nonviolent Community Leadership Training Program, his doctoral thesis, Pedagogy for Peace and Nonviolence, and Campus Ministries and Social Change is in the ‘60s (Duke Divinity Review) and The Leaders Manual: A Structured Guide and Introduction to Kingian Nonviolence with David Jehnsen. He has traveled to many countries as a lecturer and consultant on peace and nonviolence.
Dr. LaFayette is currently a Distinguished-Senior-Scholar-in-Residence at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.
