Civil rights leader Wyatt Tee Walker dies

CHESTER, VA. » The Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a leader in the civil rights movement who helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. assemble his famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” has died.

He was either 88 or 89. Family records showed different years of birth, said his daughter, Patrice Walker Powell, who confirmed his death.

Powell said her father died Tuesday morning at an assisted living facility in Chester, Virginia. She said he had been in declining health the past few years after a stroke.

Walker was a key player in the civil rights movement, brought in by King to be the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference three years after the civil rights organization was founded.

“He was such a great orator ... in the civil rights movement,” said SCLC President Charles Steele, who called Walker “a legend in his own right.”

“He was known for motivating and uplifting people and bringing about the opportunity of being hopeful.”

Before joining the SCLC, Walker was already a top civil rights leader in Virginia, where he had led a “Pilgrimage of Prayer” in Richmond against school segregation on New Year’s Day 1959.

Henry Marsh III, a civil rights lawyer, Richmond’s first black mayor and a former state lawmaker, said Walker came from modest circumstances to live a tremendous life as “one of the great American heroes.”