Civil rights ‘dean’
Lowery, 98, King’s ally in fight for justice, dies
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, a seminal civil rights leader who worked alongside the Rev., Martin Luther King Jr. and delivered the benediction at President Barack Obama’s inauguration during a storied career in the struggle against racial discrimination, has died of natural causes. He was 98.
Lowery, the son of an Alabama grocer and the great-grandson of a barrierbreaking Methodist pastor, passed away Friday at his Atlanta home with his daughters by his side. His longevity and lifelong outspokenness led to his recognition as “the dean of the civil rights movement.”
Lowery’s lifelong work for justice also led Obama to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, on the courageous minister in 2009 — shortly after his appearance at the swearing-in of the nation’s first black president.
“In our tradition, he walked the dusty of roads of South, crying out for justice in the land of the world,” tweeted the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “He never stopped fighting for those whose backs were against the wall.”
Lowery emerged as one of the preeminent leaders in the struggle for equality, working with King to launch the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 and continuing his efforts into the new millennium. Lowery dodged bullets and went toe to toe with the Klu Klux Klan at a 1979 protest in Alabama, and joined in 1960s sit-in and kneel-ins “where we had been beat up and locked up and cussed out and locked out,” he said.
He once recalled the “whoosh” of the bullets whizzing over his head at the Alabama demonstration protesting the rape prosecution of a mentally disabled black man: “I’ll never forget that. I almost died 24 miles from where I was born.”
His meetings with fellow clerics King and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy led to the creation of the SCLC, a leading force in the passage of civil rights legislation. And he provided a role model for generations of activists to come.
“He was a mentor, pastor, & friend to me,” the Rev. Al Sharpton tweeted Saturday. “The world is a better place because of him & I’m a better person because of his investment in me. May he rest in peace as he joins his wife and Dr. King on the other side.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) offered her condolences to the family of a man she described as a civil rights icon.
“Reverend Joseph Lowery dedicated his life to fighting for justice and inclusion, serving others to create a better world,” tweeted Harris. “His legacy will continue to live on in the lives of those he touched.”
The charismatic and inspirational preacher, whose great-grandfather became the first black pastor at their Methodist church in Alabama, continued his work for decades after the turbulent ’60s.
He was arrested in 1983 at a North Carolina protest over the dumping of toxic waste in a predominantly African-American county, and again a year later in Washington at an anti-apartheid rally. He criticized the war in Iraq at the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King, with then-President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush. shaking their heads in their seats.
King’s widow had once observed that Lowery “has led more marches and been in the trenches more than anyone since Martin.”
Lowery became the SCLC president in 1977, leading the organization into fighting for gay rights and election reform, and against capital punishment.