Biography

Bernard Lafayette was born on July 29, 1940 in Tampa, Florida, USA. He was married to Kate Bulls Lafayette, Kate Bulls, Colia Liddell and Colin Liddelk. He died on March 5, 2026 in Tuskegee, Alabama, USA.

By 1968, he was the national coordinator of the King's Poor People's Campaign and was with [link=nm0455052 at the Lorainne Motel on the morning of his assassination. King's last words to him were about the need to institutionalize and internationalize the nonviolence movement. After Martin Luther King Jr. died, he returned to American Baptist to complete his bachelor's degree and then earned a master's and doctorate from Harvard University.

He was one of a delegation of Nashville students who in 1960 had helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which organized desegregation and voting rights campaigns across the South.

Known for the voter registration campaign in Selma, Alabama, that culminated in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Served as director of Peace and Justice in Latin America; chairperson of the Consortium on Peace Research, Education and Development; director of the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies at the University of Rhode Island; distinguished senior scholar-in-residence at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta; and minister of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tuskegee, Alabama, among other positions.

Later trained Black youth to become leaders in the Chicago Freedom Movement and helped organize tenant unions.