Bernard LaFayette, a healer from history
Rev. Dr. Bernard LaFayette was beaten and arrested 27 times as a civil rights worker in the 1960’s. Yet his commitment to nonviolence has remained steadfast, as he explained in a recent lecture at Memphis Theological Seminary.
“We have to know the history so the future will not be a mystery,” he told the attentive audience of about 100 people. “We have to give guidance to those coming behind us. Above all, we must see the movement holistically. Don’t just look at one element or factor, look at the whole constellation of contributing factors.”
LaFayette is still practicing what he preached as a co-founder of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while attending college in Nashville. He narrowly escaped death more than once as a Freedom Rider on segregated buses traveling through the South in the early 1960’s.
He held the audience’s attention talking about the death of his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “the only man whose birthday is celebrated in over 100 countries, except Jesus Christ.”
LaFayette still has room key #206 to the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, the site of King’s murder in 1968. He was in Memphis that year to help King plan the projected Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. later that year. “Dr .King was a man of his word,” Lafayette noted humorously. “He said he would meet me in Washington and lo and behold there is his statue 30 feet tall standing there today.”
LaFayette’s calm demeanor and gentle style marks him a rare activist, “a healer from history” as a pastor in attendance commented. He stands out as a voice of reason. “We could not have accomplished all we did without the participation of white people,” he said. “Enemies hated them and mistreated them more than they hated us! Having white allies showed it was not a white versus black struggle but a struggle of justice against injustice.”
LaFayette, who works out of Emory University and has directed the Center for Non-Violence and Peace Studies, outlined specific tactics he used in the cause that made him the perfect advance man for the movement in Selma, Ala., the subject of his biography “In Peace and Freedom: My Journey in Selma.”
In jails across the South, he said, “we would sing songs until the jailers would barge in demanding we hand back the radio!” There was no radio. It was the marchers instead, imitating Paul and Silas in days of old. They would then insert the jailer’s names into the songs which made them sit up and take notice.
“Music got us through,” LaFayette aded. “On more than one occasion they brought us ice cream and ensured no one spat in our food. We must give people the chance to do the right thing... Reaching out from behind bars is a way to turn the other cheek and yet provoke doubts in your captor’s mind — ‘Who is in charge here?’ Such dynamic tactics can change the atmosphere to allow a better change to negotiate.”
LaFayette said the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida are engaging in nonviolent direct action, and from the perspective of 60 years, it has worked. What would he say to the students in Parkland?
“First they have to get organized. Form structured groups,” he said. “Bring people together, train them. Get them to move in concert. Always meet before a march so you all have the same frame of mind. Know who your supporters are — don’t depend on money people. Iron out conflicts in your own group and then reach out to others of like mind then go ahead.”
In these ways LayFayette lives up to Dr. King’s last words to him: “LaFayette, our next movement is to internationalize and institutionalize nonviolence.” Bernard LaFayette has kept that commission and, in that sense, still is marching almost 60 years later.
Neil Earle is a retired pastor living in Memphis and editor of Reconcile, a newsletter advocating principles of societal change. His website is asecondlook.info.