Bernard Lafayette
Minister, Optimist, Activist
Selma, Alabama
In his youth he challenged segregated facilities through nonviolent direct action, was a Freedom Rider, and worked with SCLC in voter registration. He suffered violence, incarceration, and death threats for taking a stand against racial injustice. He has developed curricula in nonviolence and remains active in the movement for human freedom around the world.
A group of Freedom Riders, including Bernard Lafayette (far right) stand in front of a bus in Birmingham, Alabama on May 19, 1961. Lafayette dropped out of school in order to set an example that student demonstrators would push on despite threats of jail and violence.
Lafayette peers out the window of his bus, surrounded by his fellow Freedom Riders and National Guardsmen.
Taken on May 24, 1961 after his arrest with other Freedom Riders in Jackson, Mississippi.
A picture of a seven-year-old Lafayette in Tampa, Florida.
A photo of Lafayette’s grandmother, Rozelia Forrester Williams. She served as a major influence on Lafayette’s values and outlook on religion, fairness and standing up for one’s rights.
Burned in Lafayette’s memory is the time he tried to hold a streetcar for his grandmother as she attempted to board from the back. Running after the trolley as it rolled away, she fell to the ground as the young Lafayette looked on. He remembers feeling “like a sword had cut me in half…my arms stretched out reaching for her and reaching for the door.”
Lafayette remembers the days when the streetcars were segregated and blacks had to pay up front, then run to the back before the steps folded up and the trolley sped off.
This portrait of a group of Freedom Riders was taken in the basement of Ralph Abernathy’s church in Montgomery, Alabama on May 1, 1961 before they set out on a bus ride intended to expose local segregationist policies in southern states. Segregation of public transportation was ruled a violation of interstate commerce by the Supreme Court in 1960. Lafayette stands in the back row, second from the left.
Lafayette gets ready to board a bus on his Freedom Ride in May 1961
Smoke pours from the Freedom Riders’ Greyhound bus as they look on outside of Anniston, Alabama on May 14, 1961. An anti-integrationist mob had set it on fire with a flare. The fire and violence only stiffened the resolve of student protestors like Lafayette to continue the Freedom Rides.
Black Freedom Riders sit on the grass next to the gutted shell of their burned Greyhound bus outside of Anniston, Alabama, after it had been attacked by a white mob on May 14, 1961. In an attempt to stop the progress of a Freedom Ride, a member of the white segregationist mob sat in front of the Greyhound bus, taunting the driver to run him over. As this happened, other members of the group slashed the tires and threw stones at the bus. Catching up with the Freedom Riders on the highway, they burned the bus and attacked the fleeing civil rights activists.
A photo of the fire-ravaged Greyhound bus, set aflame by segregationists outside Anniston, Alabama on May 14, 1961. White citizens had attacked the riders, slashed the bus’s tires and then set it on fire after catching up with it in a convoy of cars. Despite these events, Lafayette and other students joined another Freedom Ride less than a week later.
Three Freedom Riders from Nashville sleep in the Birmingham bus station. May 20, 1961, three freedom riders rest as they wait for the chance to continue on to Montgomery. Lafayette and his fellow riders faced numerous roadblocks during the ride that ended with their arrest in Jackson, Mississippi a few days later.
Two of Lafayette’s fellow Freedom Riders, John Lewis (left) and James Zwerg (right), covered in blood after sustaining injuries from a savage beating by segregationists in Montgomery, Alabama on May 20, 1961.
Police in Jackson, Mississippi stand ready to arrest a group of Freedom Riders as they pull into the city on May 24, 1961.
American folk musician Guy Carawan (left) sings with Lafayette (center) and James Bevel (right) in 1960. Carawan taught the now-famous protest song “We Shall Overcome” to SNCC activists.
An African American protester carries a sign down a sidewalk in Nashville during the spring of 1960. In addition to mounting lunch counter protests, movement leaders encouraged blacks to boycott businesses in the city. A major demonstration led by C. T. Vivian, Diane Nash and Lafayette in April 1960 helped pave the way for the end of segregation in Nashville.
A black student sits at a lunch counter during a March 1960 sit-in demonstration protesting segregation. Lafayette had participated in lunch counter sit-ins himself, including a 1959 test case to see how whites would react to nonviolence action.
Lafayette and other students trained in nonviolent protest using the strategy to desegregate lunch counters throughout the South. This photo shows jailed protesters eating after a demonstration on March 1, 1960.
As an activist on the front lines of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, Lafayette constantly faced the risk of arrest, injury or worse. He is pictured here after a near-fatal beating in Selma, Alabama in 1963.
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