In Memoriam: Bernard LaFayette, Selma voting rights organizer, dies at 85

Dr. Bernard LaFayette, a civil rights activist behind the Selma voting rights campaign that helped spur the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has died. He died of a heart attack, his son said. He was 85.

Dr. Bernard LaFayette: Early Organizing That Shaped Selma

LaFayette served as the advance organizer for the Selma voter registration effort, laying the groundwork for the 1965 marches that shocked the nation and accelerated federal action on voting rights.

Although “Bloody Sunday” became the defining moment, LaFayette had already spent years building local leadership. He moved to Selma in 1963 as director of the Alabama Voter Registration Campaign. He worked door‑to‑door with his then‑wife, Colia Liddell, to encourage residents to register.

Dr. Bernard LaFayette: A Leader Across the Movement

LaFayette helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in 1960. He later worked with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the American Friends Service Committee.

He also played a central role in Nashville’s sit‑in movement, which challenged segregated lunch counters and trained a generation of young organizers.

Confronting Violence with Nonviolence

In 1963, LaFayette survived an assassination attempt on the same night civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi. A neighbor intervened with a rifle as the attacker pointed a gun at him. LaFayette stepped between them, urging restraint.

He later described nonviolence as a struggle “to win that person over, a struggle of the human spirit.”

Absent From Bloody Sunday, but Not the Movement

LaFayette was working on a Chicago project when the Selma marches began, so he was not on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. He had planned to join the march on its second day.

Still, his influence remained central. For two years:

• he had trained young activists
• strengthened the Dallas County Voters League
• built the networks that sustained the movement after the attack shocked the nation.

He quickly organized supporters in Chicago to travel to Alabama for the next attempt and helped national civil rights leaders coordinate strategy as pressure mounted on Congress.

Leadership in Nonviolence Education

After Selma, LaFayette became a leading national voice on nonviolence. He served as the first director of the Peace Education Program at Gustavus Adolphus College in 1973 and later held academic roles at Alabama State University, Emory University and Auburn University.

He also directed the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at the University of Rhode Island, where he expanded training programs based on the principles of Martin Luther King Jr.

Roots in Tampa and His Education

LaFayette was born on July 29, 1940, in Tampa, Florida, the oldest of eight children. He attended both integrated and segregated schools and later said those experiences showed him “the contrast between the two worlds.”

He studied at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville and became active in the Nashville Student Movement. LaFayette later earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard University in 1972 and a doctorate in 1974.

A Legacy of Training and Teaching

LaFayette documented his Selma work in his 2013 memoir, In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma.

University of Kentucky press

His influence extended across generations of activists who viewed him as a bridge between early sit‑ins, the Selma campaign and later voting rights efforts.

In a statement, the Legal Defense Fund said his “unwavering commitment to justice and peace carried on through the decades, reaching countless communities.”