Bernard Lafayette

Bernard Lafayette (or LaFayette), Jr. (born July 29, 1940) is an American civil rights activist and organizer, who was a leader in the Civil Rights Movement.

In 1959, he, along with his friends Diane Nash, James Bevel, and John Lewis, all members of the Nashville Student Movement, led sit-ins, such as the 1960 Lunch Counter Sit-In, at restaurants and businesses that practiced segregation.

He played a leading role in early organizing of the Selma Voting Rights Movement; was a member of the Nashville Student Movement; and worked closely throughout the 1960s movements with groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the American Friends Service Committee.

Lafayette was born and raised in Tampa, Florida.

His parents were Bernard Lafayette Sr. and Verdell Lafayette.

Bernard was the eldest of eight children.

His siblings were Harold Rozelia, Brenda, Geri, Michael, and Victoria.

Lafayette spent much of his childhood in Tampa.

His family grew up poor, so Bernard started working odd jobs to gain more income by the age of 11.

His jobs included cashiering, meat cutting, delivering produce, and collecting change at a coffee shop.

When reminiscing on his childhood, Bernard says: "I had to grow up rapidly. In other words, I didn't have a childhood."

Despite being Black in the south, Lafayette says he initially attended an integrated elementary school, and eventually began to go to schools that were still segregated.

While he was at the integrated school he says that "even though it wasn't segregated, I could still see the contrast between the two worlds."

Bernard has clear recollections of some of the racism that he experienced at a young age.

When Bernard was seven years old, he was heading downtown with his grandmother, Ma Foster, so they decided to catch a cable car.

One of the segregation laws regarding cable cars was that Black people would pay at the front door, and then enter through the back door.

When his grandmother paid the cable car driver, the driver started driving before either of them could board, pocketing their money and leaving them stranded.

Lafayette says that this was one of the first instances where he realized that he wanted to do something about how African Americans were being treated.

As an advocate of nonviolence, in 1960 Lafayette assisted in the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

In 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) initiated a movement to enforce federal integration laws on interstate bus routes.

This movement, known as the Freedom Rides, had African American and white volunteers ride together on bus routes through the segregated South.

Lafayette wanted to participate, but his parents forbade him.

After the Freedom Riders were violently attacked in the city of Anniston, Alabama, the Nashville Student Movement, of which Lafayette was a member, vowed to take over the journey.

At the time, some civil rights leaders worried that the Freedom Rides were too provocative and would damage the movement.

Despite many doubts, these Nashville students were determined to finish the job.

In May 1961, in the city of Montgomery, Alabama, Lafayette and the other riders were "greeted" at the bus terminal by an angry white mob, members of Ku Klux Klan chapters, and were viciously attacked.

The Freedom Riders were brutally beaten.

Their attackers carried every makeshift weapon imaginable: baseball bats, wooden boards, bricks, chains, tire irons, pipes, and even garden tools.

During the Montgomery attack, Lafayette stood firm; his fellow riders William Barbee and John Lewis were beaten until they fell unconscious.

Lafayette, Fred Leonard and Allen Cason narrowly escaped being killed by jumping over a wall and running to the post office.

Everyone inside was carrying on individual business, just like nothing was happening outside.

Lafayette later stated, " I thought they were shooting Freedom Riders."

Bernard was married to Kate Bulls Lafayette in 1969.

He had two children with his previous wife Colia Liddell Lafayette: Bernard Lafayette III and James Lafayette Sr. According to his children, Bernard was a loving father, who never yelled at, was stern with, or even expressed anger towards his wife or his kids.

The family had a very tight-knit relationship, and spent tons of time together.

James became an ordained preacher (influenced by his father, who was a religious man), and Lafayette III attended American Baptist College.

As a young man at the age of twenty, Lafayette moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary.

During the course of his freshman year, he took classes in nonviolence at the Highlander Folk School run by Myles Horton, and attended many meetings promoting nonviolence.

He learned more about the philosophy of nonviolence as lived by Mohandas Gandhi, while taking seminars from activist James Lawson, a well-known nonviolent representative of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Lafayette began to use the nonviolent techniques as he became more exposed to the strong racial injustice of the South.