James Bevel

James Luther Bevel (born October 19, 1936 in Itta Bena, Mississippi - died December 19, 2008 in Springfield, Virginia) was a Baptist minister and the Alabama project coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr's Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the Civil Rights Movement. It was at his urging that children were invited to participate in mass demonstrations, notably with the Children's Crusade of May 1963. He was also an organizer of the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965, spurred by the shooting death of protester Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama State Trooper.

Bevel, one of 17 children born to a sharecropping family in Itta Bena, joined the US Navy and formed a doo-wop band. He graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee in 1961, where he met Bernard LaFayette Jr and John Lewis and became active in the movement for Civil Rights for African Americans.

During the Birmingham campaign, Bevel convinced movement leaders to bring schoolchildren and teenagers into the organized protests. Over many initial objections, he argued that the movement was a call to Christian duty and that children would be able to act in unison better than adults, whose obligations to the workplace and social relationships with those who opposed the protests divided their loyalties. He led the workshops to instruct youngsters about the movement's commitment to non-violence and to prepare them for likely police responses. More than 600 students were arrested on the first day of protests on May 2, 1963. The protests sparked notice around the country. Many, including both Attorney General Robert Kennedy and militant activist Malcolm X criticized the movement's use of children. More than 1000 students took to the streets the next day and, with the jails filled to overcapacity, Bull Connor directed that they be locked up at the Alabama State Fairgrounds, at unused city-owned gymnasiums and other buildings. Meanwhile the police slowed the rate of arrests and worked, instead, to try to limit movement by protesters downtown. Images of police using dogs and fire hoses to turn young protesters away from Kelly Ingram Park galvanized the national conscience against the brutality of Birmingham's white establishment.

Bevel was known as an inventive and impassioned orator. He wore a yarmulke to honor the Old Testament prophets. He spoke passionately for peace and against America's involvement in Viet Nam, leading King to take a more public anti-war stance. After King's death in 1968, Bevel took the lead in carrying out several planned demonstrations, such as a march in support of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.

Bevel's outspoken support of James Earl Ray's claims of innocence in King's assassination and disturbing revelations about his personal behavior, however, led the SCLC to distance itself from him. He was married four times and, in total, fathered 16 children with seven different women. He campaigned as Lyndon LaRouche's running mate in the 1992 presidential election, while LaRouche was serving a federal sentence for mail fraud and income tax evasion. In 1995 he worked as an organizer for the Million Man March in Washington D.C.. In April 2008 he was convicted of committing incest with one of his daughters and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. He was released on bond due to ill health in November, and died at another daughter's home in December.

References

• Remington, Alexander (December 20, 2008) "King Adviser James Bevel, 72; Incest Sentence Clouded Legacy." Washington Post