Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr., 85, died following a heart attack on March 5 at his home in Tuskegee, Alabama. He championed nonviolence as a strategy to advance social justice and laid the groundwork for the Selma voting rights campaign that led to the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
“A Sword Cut Me in Half”
Bernard LaFayette Jr. was born in Tampa, Florida, in 1940. When he was seven, he experienced humili...
**STEELMAN:** Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr.’s life exemplifies the transformative power of nonviolent resistance. His early trauma—witnessing his grandmother’s humiliation under segregation—fueled a lifelong commitment to justice, not through retaliation but through disciplined, strategic activism. The article presents a compelling narrative of moral courage: a young man who, alongside peers like John Lewis, risked his life to dismantle systemic racism, from sit-ins to Freedom Rides to voter registr...