Reverend Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr., an elder statesman of the Civil Rights Movement, and one of the last remaining and most trusted lieutenants of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who spent hours with the slain civil rights leader in Memphis before his assassination applauded the work of the nationally acclaimed journalist and standard-bearer for economic justice issues Bankole Thompson.
“Bankole Thompson. You are the next level of global leadership for social change,” Dr. LaFayette said this week while visiting Detroit to headline the 2025 Civil Rights Leadership Dinner held on Tuesday, July 22 at the Detroit Athletic Club in downtown Detroit. The invitation-only historic dinner to honor Dr. LaFayette for his gallant contributions to the Civil Rights Movement, was organized and hosted by The PuLSE Institute, an anti-poverty and economic justice organization which presented him with The Institute’s Global Civil Rights Leadership Award.
Thompson, who is the founder and dean of The Institute, has described Dr. LaFayette as one of the 20thcentury’s most important liberators in the history of the American empire for what he and other leaders such as the late former Georgia congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis did during the Civil Rights Movement to break the back of Jim Crow.
A preeminent voice of conscience and courage, Thompson, is one of the first top Black editors in the nation to interview President Barack Obama and wrote a pair of books on Obama. He is an opinion columnist at The Detroit News, where his column appears on Mondays and Thursdays.
A member of the National Press Club of Washington D.C., where he’s hosted a major forum on the future of the U.S. Senate during the 2024 election, Thompson, is host of the podcast, Bankole’s Nation. His latest book, Fiery Conscience, about his decades of speaking truth to power was released in 2023 and received a definitive review by Forbes magazine. The book is listed in the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York, considered the premier repository on the global Black experience.
“I’m honored that Dr. LaFayette, a man of tremendous humility and profound historical significance in the annals of global civil and human rights history recognizes the work that some of us are committed to. I and many others stand on the shoulders of giants like Dr. LaFayette, who paved the way for us to be where we are today,” Thompson said. “We are simply raising the Socratic questions about freedom and justice in a Kingian tradition because leaders like him did the same more than a half century ago to get us to where we are today.”
Dr. LaFayette, who was tapped by Dr. King to initiate the historic voting rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, where he served as voter registration campaign director from 1962-1965, has long admired Thompson’s courageous work and commitment to upholding the legacy of King and for tackling the underlying economic justice issues affecting Black and marginalized communities. He has been a mentor to the influential Detroit journalist, and the two maintained a very close friendship over the last two decades.
Dr. LaFayette serves as a member of the National Advisory Board of The Institute, and was one of the first leaders to answer the call of The Institute during its founding several years ago. He is also the chairman of SCLC’s National Board of Directors and a major authority on the philosophy of nonviolence. He was a co-founder and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Nashville sit-ins and one of the Freedom Riders. He has led education and training programs in Kingian Nonviolence around the globe.
Dr. LaFayette served in King’s inner circle as the National Coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, the watershed moment of the Civil Rights Movement as well as the National Program Administrator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the signature civil rights group Dr. King founded and led as president.
The SCLC’s historic work brought prominence to the civil rights struggle and laid the foundation for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. LaFayette a key strategist for King brought several people on board to work for King including civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.
When former President Barack Obama delivered the eulogy at the funeral of civil rights hero and former Georgia Congressman John Lewis, LaFayette, was among a select group of civil rights leaders that Obama mentioned as pivotal in shaping modern American history and the struggle for justice and equality. LaFayette and Lewis were roommates at the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville.
